Spook's Gold (42 page)

----

Lemele found Marner slumped against a tree, rubbing his chafed wrists that had just been untied. Standing beside him was a small, wiry soldier; this was Sergeant Dubus and he explained that he was one of Delaune’s team. “I will be responsible for making sure that Fritz here behaves,” he grinned, but there was no humour in his eyes. She ignored the man’s malice and squatted beside Marner, who did not acknowledge her presence.

After nearly twenty fours of separation, Lemele looked at him with new, objective eyes and was shocked at what she saw. He was no longer the vision of the handsome German officer in a crisp uniform that she had met a few weeks ago, no longer the proud and capable policeman. Now he was just an exhausted and lost mortal. More, he was a captive, a cornered and defeated animal. His hollow eyes were circled by dark rings, sunken into a face that was grey skin and beard stubble. Even his neat blond hair was now dark, dank and greasy. She heard his ragged breathing, something bubbling in his chest and remembered that he was still suffering from an infection; she would find a medic and ask for some antibiotics.

“Dieter.”  No response. “Dieter!” she repeated louder, angry with him for his defeatism. He looked up, took a moment to recognise her. “Good news Dieter. I told them about Graf and the U-180 and they believe me. Not only that, they are going to go with us, help us catch Graf and maybe even stop the submarine.”

Marner only stared at her. Did he not understand?  Was he delirious or more seriously ill than he appeared, she wondered?  She had tried to inject her voice with enthusiasm for his sake, but now she was growing frustrated that he had lost all motivation, just as they had been given this lucky break.

And then realisation did dawn in his face, but it was not the response that she had anticipated, “You told them where the U-180 will be?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper, “You told them the rendezvous date and location?”

Lemele nodded, not trusting her voice. She was now confused, could not understand what she had done wrong. The rendezvous was where Graf would be. The fact that the submarine would be there was almost a coincidence, could he not see that?

Marner’s eyes suddenly blazed, he snarled at her, “I thought that we were working together on this, that you supported me. Now you’ve simply made me an accessory to the betrayal, to the killing of my countrymen.”

Lemele rocked back as if slapped. “Wake up you fool! You are still wearing a German uniform, this is still my country and these people right here,” she gestured to Dubus, who was leaning against a tree and openly enjoying the exchange, “are my countrymen. Under German occupation and oppression.
They
are my allies, not you. I am doing this to catch a criminal who killed an innocent Frenchman.”

Marner tried to butt in but she suddenly stood up, leant over and hurled into his upturned face, “I respect you as a policeman, and behind that uniform I can see that you are a good man. But whilst you wear that uniform and as long as you and your countrymen remain here, you are my enemy!”

Lemele pivoted and strode away, crashing through a group of Maquis who had begun to congregate around the crates waiting to be issued with weapons, to join the new revolution. Several of them gawped and jeered at the figure of Marner and the other prisoners, joking that the captives would be a great opportunity to try out their new weapons.

----

It took the still fuming Lemele only a minute to transfer the few clothes that she wanted to keep from the bags that Loic had collected from the horses into her new rucksack. She discarded a delicate lace chemise with regret. It had been a first anniversary present from her husband; now it was tainted by damp mildew that she knew would leave a permanent stain.

She suddenly realised that she had not seen Loic since she had been summoned to the major’s tent. She presumed that he would be preparing the horses for the return journey but when she went in search of him there was only a clearing of bare trampled earth, hoof prints in the soft damp mud and piles of manure.

“He left ten minutes ago. In a very big hurry,” said a voice from behind and she whirled around, startled; she had not heard anyone approach.

He looked the same as most of the other soldiers; young and fit, bright eyed. Like a child on a weekend camping adventure that would end when he caught the train back to his home town; a tale for his friends at school on Monday. This one had a slightly Slavic look to his lean face and a distinct accent to his excellent French. “I am sorry if I frightened you. I am Slowikowski, assigned to protect you,” he smiled.

He probably thought that his phrase and his smarmy smile were going to charm her. She would put him right on that. “You don’t look old enough to be shaving. How could a boy like you possibly protect me?” she mocked him, not unkindly.

He showed no offence, “I am a paratrooper, a weapons specialist. Guns, explosives, unarmed combat. It is what I am, what I do.”

Lemele resisted the urge to laugh at his boasting; instead she switched tack, “What nationality are you?  Your French is very good.”

“I am Polish, Jewish. I also speak fluent English and good German.”

His beaming smile and deliberately struck pose relaxing against a tree trunk was irritating her intensely. “Well Monsieur Slowikowski, I have managed to get this far in one piece, so I don’t really think that your protection will be necessary. But thank you all the same,” she finished mock-polite and walked past him, heading back to the camp.

“Please, call me Andrei. Will you require a weapon?  Can you fire one?” he asked.

The question, so out of the blue, made her stop. She looked at him, blinked, and saw that he was serious. “I suppose that it would be a good idea,” she mused. “What do you think?”

He smiled again but chose his words carefully, business-like, an efficient soldier in a hostile environment. “For you, the risk of carrying a gun is that if we are captured, your cover as our captive will not hold up. Possession of a gun automatically marks you as Resistance and therefore, well, a firing squad is inevitable. The German standing order is to treat all Resistance as ‘Rücksichtslos’, which translates as....”

“‘Without consideration,’” she finished for him.

He laughed. “So you speak German too. What is your first name, I don’t...”

Lemele had to credit him with boyish good looks and charm, especially that smile and those sweet blue eyes. She was sure that he did not lack for female companions. To cut off his sudden switch towards familiarity she trumped him with yet another change of direction, “Are you planning to be taken alive?”

“Hah, no! The Germans have made it known that Special Forces will not be treated as prisoners of war.”  He mimed a gun held to his head and pulled the imaginary trigger. He was referring to a direct order from Hitler dating from 1942 to the effect that commandos and paramilitary troops were to be executed immediately. Hitler had referred to them as "terror and sabotage troops" who acted outside of the accords of the Geneva Convention and thus had no right to be accepted as prisoners of war nor treated accordingly. “So we will go down firing, taking as many of them with us as we can.”

This boy spoke of death and killing in such a business like way. How could this gentle Jewish charmer share the same body and mind as the efficient killing machine that he had been trained to be?  “In that case I’ll take the gun. It seems to me that if I am anywhere near you when things turn nasty, my chances of coming out alive are not that great anyway. So I would rather go down fighting too.”

Slowikowski grinned in appreciation of her warrior spirit. He instructed her to remain there and ambled off, returning a few minutes later with an assortment of weapons. He laid them carefully on a groundsheet that he had brought along, the trained soldier in him automatically avoiding getting dirt into the mechanisms. Lemele immediately spotted the Walther, the same model as Marner’s, and reached for it. “I’ve fired one of these before. Can I take this one?”

Slowikowski congratulated her on a good choice. “Who did you fire it at?”

Lemele sighted along the barrel, thumbed the safety off. “The rat that we are chasing.”

“Well, do not miss next time, eh?” Slowikowski chuckled.

Lemele turned to laugh too, caught herself staring into those eyes. Damn, he was good, she admitted.

Slowikowski let her handle a few of the machine guns, including some captured German machine pistols. They eventually settled on the Mk2 Sten gun in addition to the Walther, primarily because it was one of the lightest, a full kilo lighter than an MP40. He instructed her to use her left hand to steady it by the barrel and not by the magazine that protruded from the left. “It feels more natural and instinctive to hold the magazine, but the problem is that it causes the magazine to flex in the lock, causing jams.”  She was also shown how to eject two bullets from the magazine prior to use. “Just that little bit less weight in the magazine will reduce the number of jams too.”

She was permitted to fire off a few practice rounds. With the increasingly louder and more frequent gunshots coming from the surrounding forest, there were no remaining concerns about giving away the position of the camp to the Germans. Lemele was pleased at how easy the gun was to control, but the biggest surprise was how
good
it felt feeling the bullets pump out, shredding bark chips from the target trees. She flashed back to the moment when she had fired the Walther at Graf. Perhaps due to the stress of the situation she had not reflected on it at the time, but now the memory felt illicitly good; this was power, this was how to make bullies cringe and run. A shiver ran down her back, as if she had experienced a hit of a powerful but addictive narcotic. She knew that she liked it, but also that destruction and misery were its companions, the dark sides of the beast that were more difficult to resist once released and tasted.

Slowikowski complimented on her skills, finishing with some instruction on reloading and how to deal with jams in both of her selected weapons. By the time that they had completed her induction, the skilful Pole had also elicited from Lemele her first name, approximate age and the fact that she was married. By the way that he grinned at her, she knew that this latter fact was not going to be a deterrent.

----

In the thirty minutes since she had left it, the camp had descended into controlled chaos. Groups of soldiers were being briefed and then would go plunging off down the hill towards whatever destination they had been despatched. Everyone seemed to know what they should be doing and was going about it calmly, despite the close proximity of the exchanges of gunfire in the forest. The only problem seemed to be in the corner where the munitions and supplies were stored. There were not enough people to carry it all and there was now a heated debate underway as to whether the remainder should be blown up or even booby-trapped to prevent it falling into enemy hands.

Slowikowski explained that the materiel had been dropped primarily to arm the local resistance groups. They had succeeded in distributing some of it; unfortunately, the discovery of the camp by the Germans earlier than anticipated meant that there was too much remaining.

“So is that your objective here – to arm the Maquis?” she asked.

“Sorry, I cannot disclose our operational objectives to you,” he stated in an officious tone, but with a smile that indicated he was teasing her.

Lemele was content to drop the subject rather than play games with him. Dubus had now joined them and provided the answer. “We are SAS; Special Air Service. Our primary mission is direct action, destroying things that the Germans rely on to communicate and move around. Which is why we brought along kids like Andrei here, lunatics who like playing with explosives and making big bangs,” Dubus gestured with a nod of his head towards Slowikowski. “We don’t have sufficient numbers yet for direct fighting with the Fritz, but we don’t mind mixing it up with them a bit when the odds are more in our favour.”

From the way that he grinned, Lemele could tell that ‘direct action’ was something that he relished. “So why are there so many Maquis here collecting guns?”

“This was actually our camp but the bloody SOE have more or less taken it over. It’s their job to organise and arm the locals, not ours. And now, with all of these damned peasants tramping in and out of the woods, they’ve revealed the location of the camp and we have to abandon it.”  He clearly was not enamoured with the SOE or the Maquis. “They have been armed up and keyed up by the SOE and told the time is nigh to rise up and overthrow the Germans. But there is no discipline. These people want to get into action, fight back and even settle some old scores. We can’t blame them for that, but they wade into trouble without thinking about it. They don’t seem to understand that a gun doesn’t make them invincible. The Germans still outnumber and outgun them, and the Germans are trained and competent soldiers. The Maquis are motivated but they are still just angry amateurs; volatile too. Now that they have got guns in their hands and apparent authority to act, they are just as interested in settling old scores with local collaborators and milice as in tackling the Germans. All of which is made worse by the innumerable factions.”

Dubus was referring to the wide political and ideological spectrum spanning the global mass of French
resistantes
. These included the FFI –
Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur
– who were being organised as a formal army of resistance with a nominal allegiance to Charles de Gaulle, as well as the FTP –
Francs Tireurs et Partisans
– who were predominantly communist. Within and without these two politically opposed groups there were numerous sub-factions. “Even if you get ten local Maquis commanders in a room, it is impossible to get them to agree on the priorities or to work together due to their political differences. Add in their lack of training and it means that they are a bloody liability, so we try to avoid them and work alone.”

Delaune had now joined them, with Marner in tow. Marner did a brief double-take at seeing Lemele with her new military rucksack and Sten hanging from a harness, but said nothing and would not meet her eye.