The Caves of Périgord (13 page)

“Jean-Marie, the dog has had three black puppies.” Jack bet that was theirs. Among all the usual lists of family messages and snatches of poetry that came with the news bulletins on the BBC French services, he suspected that was the one to prepare the reception committee for this night’s landing. He had felt some unconscious echo of recognition for Jean-Marie’s puppies. It was almost a tradition before the teams flew
out, listening to the previous night’s radio messages and wondering which was theirs. He imagined the Germans listening in frustration as they heard these public broadcasts beaming out from the powerful British transmitters, knowing they were hearing coded orders and alerts and confirming drop zones for the secret war in France, and not having the slightest idea what they meant.

The engines were throttled back sharply. A thump, a bounce, and they were down, careering jerkily along some French plateau. And if they were lucky, not a German within miles. Don’t speak too soon, he told himself. A German ambush never opened up when the aircraft was landing, only when it was down and they could bag the lot.

The landing went on, it seemed forever, as the aircraft lurched like a tractor over a plowed field. He tried to look at François, give him a thumb’s-up, but he could see nothing in the darkness of the plane’s hold. Then he felt a friendly slap on his knee as the plane slowed, and began its turn. McPhee. He leaned forward, gave a thump on the broad back in return. The engines revved again. The pilot would taxi back all the way to his landing point, ready to take off into the wind with the minimum of time on the ground.

This was the most uncomfortable ride he had ever had in his life, worse than a tank going over ditches. His mouth already dry with tension, he made himself gulp and breathe deeply. The flight hadn’t bothered him at all; it would be too shaming to get travel sickness while taxiing, or to throw up at his first sight of France. Finally, they stopped, the engines just ticking over. The copilot came out to open the hatch and guide them out. The two radio operators went first, each reaching up for the suitcases that held their sets. Then François, McPhee, and then him. François was already embracing somebody on the ground. Shapes dashed past him, reaching up into the belly of the plane to take out the cargo. Another figure loomed at his side, slapped him on the shoulder, and hustled him away, muttering words of welcome amid gusts of garlic.

He tripped over something metallic and noisy, hurting his leg, Barbed wire! No, bicycles. Then came a whiff of warm engine oil and he saw the shape of a farm tractor. At the far side of the bicycles, a group of people in coats began walking toward the Hudson for the long flight back. One of them was a woman. Perhaps he should warn her not to bother taking back French perfume. The girls back at Tempsford and in Baker Street got so much that they used it in their cigarette lighters.

Apart from the pitch darkness, the field was like a busy station platform when the express was about to leave. There seemed to be people everywhere, a whole village turned out for the event. He heard children’s laughter. Men rushed about with trolleys, calling to one another. The tractor started up. He was pushed aside as women picked up bicycles. The plane’s engines built into a roar. Another push on his shoulder, and then he saw the glow of the cigarette and recognized François. McPhee was with him and a man with his arm around François’s shoulder led them away from the bicycles, through a gap in a hedge into a field that was heady with the rich stench of manure, and where there was a small truck. They were all piled into the back, banging into milk churns and trying to untangle their legs as the truck moved off, gears grinding. He no longer heard the plane, but it must be off by now. England was a long way back, and his nausea had passed, although his stomach was tight. And suddenly, as if on a signal, they all began to laugh, great gusts of it as they pounded each other’s shoulders and backs. The Jedburgh team was down safely and racketing along some country lane. Somewhere in France in a truck that stank of sour milk and dark French tobacco. All according to plan.

The barn was dry but cold, the straw banked against the walls, their rucksacks leaning against them. The man who had led them to the truck reached behind one of the straw bales and pulled out a bottle of
cognac and a small, thick glass. François drank it first, and then the Frenchman, and they embraced again.

“My brother Christophe,” said François, introducing them. “We call him Berger, the shepherd.”

Berger stood back, looked at his brother in khaki, his hand stretching out to finger the Cross of Lorraine on one sleeve, and then looked at Jack in his English battledress, at McPhee in his olive drab. He was dressed like a farmer, in a flat cap and moleskin trousers, a patched old overcoat that was held together with string. His hands were dirty, but Jack noticed that the nails were well cut. And when he spoke, it was the French of an educated man.

“My God, what are we to do with three men in uniform?” he asked. Jack thought it was a fair question. But that was policy for the Jedburgh teams. They were not spies, to skulk around pretending to be Frenchmen. They were not meant to go near towns, but to stay out in the countryside with the Maquis. Their uniforms were deliberate, to boost the morale of the cold and hungry French boys who had taken to the hills and woods rather than be conscripted to go and work in German factories, to remind them that they were soldiers. It should also mean, with any luck, that if Jack or McPhee were captured they would not be shot as spies.

“You put us to work, Christophe,” said François kindly. “You take us to every group of Maquis you know from here to Limoges and down to Cahors, and we call in the arms drops and we show them what to do.”

“So the invasion is that close?” his brother asked eagerly.

“I doubt it, not this early in the year. But we need time to teach them, time to organize, time to rebuild. The Gestapo has been busy. Apart from you and Hilaire, there are not many networks left.”

“You know Hilaire is coming up to see you?”

“And you know these suspicious Allies of ours,” Francois grinned. “The gentlemen of Baker Street want to make sure their star agent keeps a close eye on dangerous Gaullists like you and me. The same
with our two Anglo-Saxon friends here. Baker Street needs you and me to set up the network, Christophe, but they send these two Francophones along to watch us.” François winked, to take the sting out of the remark, but Jack didn’t think he was joking. Nor, from the level way he looked at Jack and McPhee, did Christophe.

“But equally you can keep an eye on us, François,” said the Englishman. “Make sure we don’t call in any arms drops for those Communists you’re always grumbling about.”

“You see, Christophe? You must be careful of this man,” smiled François. “You might think he looks and sounds like just another stupid English cavalry officer. Don’t be fooled. They sent us a brainy one.”

“Jesus, now I know why the Krauts have been winning this war,” said McPhee wearily. “They just had to walk in while you French were sniping at each other and spending the rest of your time watching the British. Let’s stop this shit and get on with killing Germans, like we’re supposed to. Let’s start with you, Christophe. Is this barn meant to be our base? Because if it is, it’s too damn near the landing ground. And what happened to our radio operator?”

Christophe was older than François, in his early thirties, and he looked like a civilian. Whatever military service he might have done was a long time ago. Thicker-built than his brother, with the same dark complexion and oddly light, gray eyes, he took his time before answering the American. He turned to his brother first. “Another cavalryman, François?” he asked.

“Parachutist,” said his brother.

“You have my sympathies, Monsieur,” Christophe said to McPhee. “Your great skill is to drop in from the skies, and we poor squabbling Frenchmen have somehow managed to organize ourselves well enough that we can hold an airstrip so you just fly in and walk out of the plane. We have not spent all our time fighting each other and being suspicious of the English. But then we have known the English for a long time around here. All this land used to belong to them, though it has been
ours now for five hundred years. And I don’t think the Germans will last here nearly as long as the English did.”

“If you know the land that well, I sure hope you have found us a better-base than this,” said McPhee.

“We have indeed. But this is where we stay until we are sure the Germans are not sending out patrols to look for you. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. But they always hear the planes, and they always mark the area where it came down. So we never use the same field twice, and we never use the same barn twice. You have learned security in a schoolroom, my dear American ally. We have learned it in a harder school. So never think of me as Christophe again. I am known as Berger.”

Jack found himself nodding in understanding as Christophe spoke. He had heard that tone of bitter, undisguised resentment before, when the British spoke of the American troops and airmen flooding into their country. Overpaid, oversexed, and over here. That was the phrase. And the British still had all the pride that came from never have been invaded, from never having given up. For a Frenchman, living with the defeat of 1940 and the shame and guilt of surrender, and seeing German troops occupying their land, it must be a thousand times worse.

“McPhee,” he interrupted. “Calm down. Remember what these chaps have been through, what they put up with day after day. To have survived this long, they know what they’re doing.”

Christophe didn’t even glance at the Englishman, nor did he seem to notice McPhee’s half-apologetic shrug. He just carried on talking with cold control, like a teacher handing out punishments to a schoolboy.

“From here, you will be taken to a house where there is the meeting with your man Hilaire. Then you will go east, into the hills of the Massif, to meet your first Maquis. Your radio operator is already on his way there, as you would have been except I was ordered at the last moment to arrange security and facilities for your meeting. This has not been
easy. I have not slept for three nights because of this. And if you think I am suspicious, wait until you meet those frightened young scarecrows who have just wanted to escape this war. I don’t think many of them are going to be too eager to use those weapons of yours, at least not until the invasion comes and they can see that you mean it. What you will find is a handful of men that I trust, and who will listen to you and train with you because I tell them to and they trust me. Most of them have known our family and me all our lives. Most of them are old soldiers, some from the Great War and a few from 1940. They know the country and they know how to fight. They need you only to bring them weapons and explosives, and to show them how to use them. As far as they are concerned, and as far as I am concerned, this is a French battle, with French leaders, French blood, and French objectives. You may think we are all on the same side. In my view, we simply happen to share a common enemy.”

“Lest an impure blood pollute our thresholds,” mocked McPhee, half-singing the line from the “Marseillaise.”

“Shut up, McPhee, and grow up. Please,” Jack interrupted. He was feeling sick again. He also felt that all McPhee’s protests had missed the most important single feature of the night’s events. The flurry of activity and unloading as they had landed had left all the guns and all the explosives in the hands of Christophe’s men. And he knew that they would stay under Christophe’s control, with carefully rationed items made briefly available for educational purposes only. Any shooting or demolition that would take place would be at Christophe’s behest. So what?—so long as they killed Germans. And he was going to have to learn to call the man Berger. The American was looking at him aggressively. Jack reached across for the brandy bottle. “This war’s going to last a long time.”

They knew that Hilaire’s network was a legend, one of the biggest of the SOE’s networks in France and one of the most productive. They had been told no more by Baker Street, for what they did not know they could not betray. But there was always gossip at the training camps, where someone had said that the agent known as Hilaire had been promoted again, to lieutenant colonel, the highest rank of any SOE officer in France. And there was more loose talk from the RAF boys at Tempsford, who told them of two RAF aircrew from a downed bomber walking in uniform into a certain bar in Toulouse and asking a stunned waiter in schoolboy French for help. The waiter dropped the tray in astonishment on top of a table occupied by plainclothes Gestapo, and Hilaire himself had spirited them out and away in the confusion, and got them over the Pyrenees. It was one of the RAF pilots who had dropped the name Starr. And it had been François who had said casually one evening that Monsieur le Maire had originally landed by boat in southern France, and got to Lyon just as the circuit known as Spruce was being broken up by the Gestapo, and decided to move to Gascony.