V for Vengeance (54 page)

From time to time one or other of them went up the companionway so as to be informed at once if any unusual activity was going on. They saw several German planes, and about nine o'clock one that Gregory believed to be British, flying very high. He wondered if its pilot was even then examining the convoy through his observation glasses with special interest.

They thanked God that the weather was fine, as if the plane that Gregory had seen had not identified the
Sans Souci
and her tow it was a virtual certainty that some other British plane would report the big barge convoy during the course of the morning.

But in any case several hours must elapse before the attack could be expected, as the Admiralty would certainly not be holding a force in perpetual readiness for this minor operation, and even in wartime instructions could not be issued and ships sent to sea at a bare few minutes' warning. There was also the question of air co-operation and the fact that the British flotilla would have to cross the Channel before it could attack the enemy's escort.

Aircraft continued to come and go in the sky above, and on two occasions they saw a brief air battle in which Nazi planes came spiralling down into the sea, leaving a long black smoky trail behind them.

Soon after eleven o'clock, as they were beating up towards a large town which Gregory felt certain was Dieppe, Kuporovitch
noticed a motor launch leave the pier and come racing out towards the convoy. The launch feathered through the water until it reached the leading tug. Soon afterwards a signal was hoisted, and the convoy came down to half speed, while the various escort vessels closed in upon it.

The Russian had already called the others up, and with some perturbation they began to wonder what was happening. All too soon they knew. Each of the escort vessels picked a barge, and German sailors from the E-boats began to scramble on board them.

‘Hell!' exclaimed Gregory. ‘What cursed luck! The Nazis have tumbled to something at the eleventh hour. They must have got wind of it somehow that one of the barges contains Baras and the rest of our friends, so the men in the E-boats have been ordered to search them.'

‘Oh, poor wretches!' Madeleine sighed. ‘It's too terrible to think of their being caught and hauled back to suffer God knows what horrors when they've been cooped up in that barge for a fortnight and are so very near being rescued.'

‘If they search every barge they'll find us too,' remarked Kuporovitch grimly.

‘I think that depends on if they stumble on us first,' Gregory replied. ‘If they find the others they probably won't bother to search any further. Thank goodness none of the E-boats picked Baras' barge to start off with, as it'll probably work the other way too, and if they find us first they'll be satisfied.'

Madeleine nodded. ‘It's really a question as to what information they have. If they're looking for sixty or seventy people they won't be content with us three, but, if they've just been tipped off that there are some stowaways on one of the barges, finding us would put them off the track of the others altogether.'

Gregory and Kuporovitch remained silent, but looked quickly at each other. They both knew what was in Madeleine's mind; if they showed themselves at once, and gave themselves up, that might be the means of saving some sixty other people from death and torture.

It was a terrible decision to have to make. The Gestapo would show them no mercy, and once they had given themselves
up, with all three of them as prisoners, and no one outside to give them aid, they knew that there was very little chance of their being able to escape again. Yet, in the past weeks they had suffered so much already, and were now so very near freedom. Even though they were standing above a great mass of high explosive the odds would have been about even on their being picked up by the British after they had taken to the water, if only they could swim far enough from the barge before it was blown sky-high. It was Madeleine who decided their terrible problem for them by saying:

‘I think we ought to, don't you?'

The others both knew what she meant, and they nodded slowly. Then she walked up the few remaining steps of the companionway on to the open deck, and that tough man Stefan Kuporovitch felt that it could have been no braver sight to have witnessed Marie Antoinette walking up the steps of the guillotine.

The men followed her out from their hiding-place and waved to the Germans in the nearest E-boat. The boat cast off from the barge ahead of them, which it had just been examining. An officer in it spoke to one of the sailors, who stood up in its prow and began to semaphore the other boats. Immediately the men in them gave up their search, and together with the launch which had put out from Dieppe they all headed for the barge on which Madeleine and her friends were standing.

The nearest E-boat pulled up alongside, but none of its crew attempted to come aboard. Two of them covered the stowaways with automatic rifles and waited until the launch arrived, A black-uniformed figure was standing in its stern, and with grim forebodings the little party on the barge recognised him as their old enemy, Major Wolfram Schaub.

Two sailors scrambled on to the barge, then two S.S. men, then the Major. As he came forward his strong nobbly face was wreathed in smiles.

‘
So!
' he said. ‘I've got you after all. It was a near thing, after that idiot policeman messed things up last night.'

‘Congratulations,' said Gregory cynically, ‘On your marvellous staff work. We've been up against every Gestapo man in France for the past fortnight and made our way through
the German lines of the forbidden coastal area; yet you owe it to pure chance, and a dumb-headed French Quisling having recognised us, that you got on our track before we could get clean away.'

‘Enough!' snapped Schaub. ‘I will teach you manners and to cringe at the name of the Gestapo before you're very much older. Get down in the boat, all of you.'

There was nothing to do but to obey, so they lowered themselves over the side into the stern of the launch. All took as long as possible, as it seemed to them now that every second counted, and they were still hoping against hope that the British Navy might come on the scene before Schaub actually get them into Dieppe.

With eager, desperate gaze they searched the sea and sky; but there was not a sign of any shipping except that in the convoy, and above them only two patrolling Messerschmitts circled lazily.

When they were in the boat Schaub ordered the young naval officer in it to return to Dieppe. Their speed increased and the launch shot forward. They had not more than two miles at the outside to cover, and as they sped away they now kept their eyes fixed sadly on the string of barges that for so many days they had struggled so desperately to catch, and which, as it proceeded slowly up-channel, carried away their last hopes of life and freedom.

They were half-way to the shore when Gregory suddenly spoke: ‘You haven't got Léon Baras yet, have you?'

Schaub looked at him quickly. ‘No, why do you ask?'

‘Because I don't like Baras. He once did me a dirty trick, and sooner or later I always get even with my enemies. Would you make it any easier for us if I told you where you could lay your hands on Baras?'

‘Yes, I'd do a deal,' the Major replied. ‘The Communist Deputies have been giving us a lot of trouble, and I'd like to make an example of one of them. Naturally, you'll understand that all three of you will face a firing-squad, but I can arrange matters so that you face it standing up, instead of lying on the ground already beaten to a pulp.'

‘All right, then,' Gregory nodded. ‘I've only got your word, and I wouldn't do it if I didn't want to get even with Baras,
but I'm going to trust you about seeing to it that we're not tortured before we're shot. Baras was in our party, but we disliked each other so much that he decided to travel in a different barge. If you like to turn back you'll find him in the second barge of the second string.'

Madeleine and Stefan had been listening to Gregory and wondering what on earth he was trying to do. Now they both stared at him in open amazement. Either of them would have given a great deal to escape torture and flogging before they died, but having decided to give themselves up in order to save all those other people, it seemed a poor cowardly businness not to go through with it right to the end, as if Baras was discovered all the others must be too.

Suddenly they caught a faint rat-tat-tat high above their heads and, looking up, they saw something they had not noticed while listening to Gregory. Two squadrons of British fighter planes had suddenly come on the scene, diving from a great height at terrific speed right out of the sun on to the two German Messerschmitts. Gregory's strong eyes had seen those squadrons first, and the sight of them had convinced him that the party was on.

Air battles were nothing new to Major Schaub, and with hardly a glance above his head he ordered the launch back to the string of barges. Before they were half-way there the two Messerschmitts, caught napping, disintegrated under an absolute hail of cannon-shells from the swarm of British fighters, and the pieces came fluttering down into the sea. The two squadrons then divided; one turning south, and the other north, they curved away in opposite directions across the coast of France.

The Germans in the launch cursed a little and shook their fists in impotent anger as they saw the wreckage of the Messerschmitts tumbling down from the sky. The Ack-Ack escort ship had come into action, as also had the anti-aircraft guns in the E-boats, but after a few moments they all ceased fire, as the British squadrons had passed out of range. As far as the Germans were concerned it was just an episode of the war, which was now over.

The guns had hardly ceased firing when the launch reached the barge where Léon Baras and his friends were confined.
Once more two sailors went aboard, then two S.S. men, then Major Schaub. The three prisoners remained seated in the stern of the launch, listening with all their ears and wondering what the devil was going to happen.

Suddenly there was the sound of shots and shouting from the barge. The shots increased to a din as more and more rifles and automatics came into action. As Gregory had guessed, Baras and his companions, all of whom were armed, were not going to allow themselves to be taken without a struggle, and there were at least twenty Frenchmen to the five Germans. Gregory had led the Major into a pretty trap.

One by one the Germans had disappeared down the companionway in the after-part of the barge. Now one of the S.S. men reappeared and dashed to its side. ‘Help! Help!' he shouted. ‘The barge is full of these damned Frenchmen, and they've all got guns! Quick! Up you come, all of you, and lend a hand!'

There were two more S.S. men in the launch, guarding the prisoners, one sailor up in the bows, and the young naval officer who was standing by the tiller. One of the S.S. men turned to the officer and with a wave towards the prisoners cried: ‘Here, you, look after these people!' Then both of them hauled themselves up over the barge's side; the sailor in the bow jumped after them.

As Gregory and Kuporovitch had only just given themselves up they had not yet been searched or disarmed. No sooner were the S.S. men out of the way than they pulled their guns from their pockets. The young officer made a quick grab at his holster, but too late. As he turned to face Gregory, Kuporovitch hit him a mighty backhander, and he toppled overboard. Next minute the two friends had come into action with their guns, taking the S.S. men on the barge in the rear. They shot both of them in the back.

Madeleine grabbed up a boat-hook and fixed it into the barge's deck-rim so that the launch should not drift away from it, as she cried to the other two: ‘Up you go! I can manage to hang on. I'll be all right here.'

Stefan shook his head. ‘No, Baras and the rest are more than enough to tackle those Nazis. But there'll be more of
them arriving in the other boats in a minute. I'm staying here with you.'

The sounds of firing had already attracted attention. The convoy had come down to slow, and the three E-boats were all racing towards them.

Gregory was now desperately anxious. If he had been wrong about those two squadrons of fighter planes, and they had no special interest in the convoy, but had merely appeared above it by chance on one of their daily patrols, the fat was in the fire with a vengeance. The Germans in the E-boats and the Flak-ship were more numerous and better armed than Baras and his friends. It would be a frightful business if all of them were now killed or captured as a result of his clutching at a straw, and if, in the hope of saving his own party after all, he had wrecked everything by his premature disclosure that Baras was in the barge. The launch was on the landward side of the barge. With a quick glance at the oncoming E-boats he sprang on to her deck to stare wildly at the sea horizon.

For a moment he believed the game was up. Then he thought he saw some faint smudges of smoke on the skyline. Shading his eyes with his hand he stared again. Yes, he was right—there were six of them. The Germans had seen them too; a hooter on the Ack-Ack ship began to wail.

After that everything seemed to happen incredibly quickly. The planes were back again, circling overhead; the smudges of smoke increased and grew nearer with fantastic speed, turning into six long low destroyers. They were still several miles away when they opened fire with their biggest guns. Shells began to scream overhead and plunge into the water among the other strings of barges, sending up great fountains of foam. The German E-boats were within a few hundred yards of the launch, but all of them now changed their courses and swerved out to seaward of the line of barges. Below the barge's deck fighting was still in progress. Revolvers cracked, and every moment there came the scream or curse of a wounded man.

Fascinated by the sight of the action as he was, Gregory forced his eyes away from it and, turning, yelled to Madeleine: ‘Come on up! You'll be all right here now.' Stooping, he grasped her hands to drag her on board. Kuporovitch
hauled himself up after her, and when he got to his feet Gregory saw that he was laughing.