Codename Eagle (23 page)

Paul said nothing; he just kept walking.

“Get away!” Alain yelled again, then turned and ran onto the plateau.

“Alain!” Paul shouted. “Stop! Give up; it’s over! It’s madness to run out there; stop!”

But Alain kept running and quickly disappeared into the night.

Paul followed, peering into the darkness, trying to catch sight of Alain and staying alert for lurking danger. The treacherous plateau was risky enough in full daylight, but in darkness it was as dangerous as walking into a minefield.

“Alain!” Paul yelled. “Alain, come back, please!”

There was a sudden short scream and then a splash.

Paul stopped, his eyes wide. “Alain! Alain!”

There was no reply.

“Alain!”

Nothing.

Paul walked on, trying to figure out where the shout had come from, but on the vast emptiness of the plateau it was almost impossible to judge.

He stumbled forward, repeatedly calling Alain’s name and stopping every thirty seconds or so to listen for a sound or a cry for help, but nothing came back.

Treading cautiously he arrived at a hole, no more than a metre and a half across. Standing on the crumbling edge, he stared down and saw water about a metre below, a jet-black pool; a sinkhole. The water appeared undisturbed, and terrifyingly dark. A single bright star up in the night sky was reflected on the surface.

Paul looked up and gazed out in every direction. There was nothing to be seen; the night was perfectly still.

He glanced briefly at the water again and then turned to retrace his steps. The van was no longer in sight.

Paul could see nothing he recognized. He was totally confused and lost.

T
here was an overwhelming smell of rotting and fermenting fruit.

Didier had been stunned by the fall into the cellar, but the thick old rug had prevented any broken bones. He came round, feeling as though he had a hangover.

Max and Julia were calling to him.

“Didier!”

Dust was clogging his throat.

“Didier!”

He coughed. “I’m all right,” he finally croaked.

“Are you hurt?”

“I … I don’t think so.”

It was blacker than night in the cellar and looking up, Didier could only just make out the outline of the two heads staring down from above.

“Can you get me out?” he asked, getting to his feet.

“We don’t know,” Max answered. “It’s so dark and there are no electric lights, we can’t even find any more candles. There must be some, but in all this clutter…”

“Keep looking,” Didier told him as his night vision started to kick in.

He began to explore the cellar, searching for a way out. The entire space appeared to be packed and stacked with food. Cans were piled high on shelves, sacks of vegetables sat against the walls, there were rows of bottles containing preserved and pickled foods, and lines of open trays of apples and pears, piled five or six high.

The cellar was a vast larder.

Didier knew that after the shortages and rationing of the First World War, many older French people had begun to hoard food in case another war came along.

And it had.

He’d never met Alain’s parents, but knew they’d been relatively old when their only son was born.

They’d both died years before the Second World War started, and it looked as though their food hoard had remained undisturbed since then, although, as Didier heard scrabbling and squeaking in one corner, he realized that rats and mice were taking a share of what was on offer.

He moved cautiously along one wall and bumped his head against a long, dry bone hanging from a rope. A few shreds of shrivelled meat clung to the bone; Didier realized that this was all that remained of a cured ham.

Moving on, he almost stumbled as one foot encountered the bottom step of a stone staircase set into the side of the wall. He climbed it and came to a heavy old door. He flicked the latch and pushed, but the door was locked.

“Over here!” Didier yelled. “There’s a door. See if you can find the key.”

He listened as two sets of footsteps crossed the floor above.

“We’re here!” Max called from the other side of the door. “Julia found some candles so we can see, but there’s no key in the lock.”

“Look around,” Didier told him. “It has to be somewhere.”

Even as he spoke Didier knew that there was no certainty at all that the key was nearby. It could be anywhere: in the house, in Alain’s pocket or lost.

He heard Max and Julia rummaging around the room and feared they might well search all night and still not find the elusive key.

Then a thought struck him. “Is there a ceiling beam near the door?” he shouted.

Max’s voice came back. “Yes, just above, a big heavy beam.”

“Check at the end, near the wall.”

After a few seconds Max shouted excitedly. “You’re right, there’s a key hanging on a nail in the wood!”

Didier heard the key pushed into the lock. It turned.

The door swung open and Didier was face to face with his rescuers.

“How did you know?” Julia asked.

Didier smiled. “My dad always kept the key to our cellar hanging above the door.”

Paul had lost track of time.

By starlight, at the sinkhole, he’d tried to check his watch and found the glass smashed and the hands stopped at precisely 9.25. But he had no idea at what point during his battle with Alain the watch had stopped.

Since then he seemed to have been walking for a long time; it took an age just find the road. When he finally did, he turned in the direction of Espezel, and after a further ten minutes or more came upon the blue van.

For a few fleeting moments he thought he might find Alain hiding in the wreckage. He stopped and circled the vehicle warily, his feet crunching over fragments of glass from the shattered windscreen and headlights. Fuel had leaked from the ruptured tank and Paul realized how lucky they had been that the vehicle had not erupted in a ball of flame when it went over. There was no sign of Alain; his luck had not lasted for very much longer.

Paul walked on; no one passed him on the road. He was incredibly weary, his body ached and he was desperate for sleep. The previous night he’d done no more than doze fitfully. Now last night seemed a lifetime ago.

He knew he had to stay alert. He thought about Josette and Didier and then his thoughts drifted to the operation to take him from France that night, the operation codenamed
Eagle
.

In his confused and exhausted state he wondered if perhaps the Lysander plane due to pick him up had already come and gone from Puivert. But surely it couldn’t be that late – could it? Whatever the time, Paul knew without doubt that there would be no chance now of returning to Lavelanet to say his farewells to Josette. He would have to break his promise.

He felt in his inside jacket pocket for the letter he’d written the previous evening. Thankfully it was still there. He kept walking, his mind and body aching, his leg throbbing with a nagging pain from the buried splinter.

Reaching the junction with the main road, he stopped and rested for a moment. As he turned towards Espezel he saw, to his joy, the headlights of an approaching car.

It was Henri’s car, with Didier at the wheel. And as it slowed to stop, Paul saw Max and Julia in the back seat.

Didier jumped from the car, the engine still running. “Are you all right?”

Almost too weary to answer, Paul nodded.

“And Alain?”

“Out there somewhere,” Paul said, pointing back towards the plateau. “He crashed the van and ran off. I tried to stop him but … I think he drowned in one of the pools.”

There was no time to stand and talk.

“Get in the car, Paul, we have to get you to Puivert.”

Paul pulled open the passenger door and sank into the seat as Didier got behind the wheel.

“The van went over on its side,” Paul said. “You’ll see it as we cross the plateau.”

“We can’t go that way.”

“Why not?”

“Because at some time tonight – could be any time now – the Germans will be on the plateau to meet their own plane. We can’t risk running into them with Max and Julia in the car.”

“So where do we go?”

“We take the back route,” Didier said, pulling away. “Then cross the plateau on the far side and go down into Puivert. It’ll be tight, but if we’re fast we might just make it.”

T
he road was long and winding, much slower than the route across the plateau, especially in darkness. The descent was steep at times, with plunging drops into deep valleys on either side as the road twisted and turned.

Didier was as tired as Paul and was using all his powers of concentration to stay awake and focus on the driving. But more than once he found his eyes closing.

“Tell us what happened with Alain,” he said to Max and Julia, blinking and rubbing his eyes after almost swerving off the road on a hairpin bend. “Just keep talking.”

Julia went first, explaining how Alain had drawn the pistol as they left the forest track and then driven them at gunpoint to the house in Espezel.

Then Max told the shocked Paul and Didier how their captor had admitted his involvement with the murderous gang that had robbed and slaughtered escapees in the Pyrenees the previous year.

“Alain,” Didier said, fully awake now. “I can’t believe it!”

“Believe it,” Max continued, “because he also told us that when you and Henri got close to discovering exactly what was going on, he killed two other people in the gang to stop them from talking.”

“Yvette and Gaston?
He
killed them?”

“Yes,” Julia said, “Yvette and Gaston, those were the names.”

“Alain!” Paul said, shaking his head. “We never considered him, not even in the past couple of days.”

“I always thought he was all bluff,” Didier added. He glanced in the rear view mirror at Max and Julia. “And we’d never have known if he hadn’t told you.”

“And he wasn’t finished,” Max said. “He was still planning to have his revenge on all of you.”

Paul shook his head. “He almost started with me tonight.”

They fell silent, lost in their own thoughts as the road twisted on.

“What time is it?” Paul asked.

Didier glanced quickly at his watch. “Nearly eleven thirty, they’ll be waiting for us by now.”

“Are we close?”

“Getting there.”

Paul gazed out at the night sky. “I won’t get to see Josette after all,” he said quietly to Didier.

“I know.”

“I promised I’d go back to say goodbye, I wanted to. She’ll know I wanted to.”

“Of course.”

“But you’ll explain everything, won’t you?”

“Yes, and I’ll … I’ll give your goodbyes.”

Paul sighed. “And what about Max and Julia? Where will they go?”

Didier shrugged his shoulders. “Henri will work something out.”

They were descending quickly now, and as they passed the turning for the tiny village of L’Escale they rounded a long, sweeping bend and glimpsed the dark mass of Puivert Castle, resting serenely on its hilltop site and silhouetted against the night sky.

“We’ll make it now – let’s hope they’re waiting.”

Didier drove down into the village of Puivert and continued on through the winding main street.

“Do you know where the landing strip is?” Paul asked.

Didier nodded. “We’re almost there.”

Just outside the village, he turned the vehicle onto a mud track. There were trees on either side, and beyond the trees the landscape opened into a wide valley.

Didier turned off the headlights and continued down the track on sidelights. They reached what looked like a large shed. It was in darkness, but standing nearby they could just see the outline of two or three stationary vehicles.

Bringing the car to a standstill, Didier switched off the engine and they waited. A minute passed, two minutes, and then figures approached from the shadows.

Didier and Paul began to open the doors.

“Stay exactly where you are!” a voice ordered.

“We’ve come for
Eagle
,” Didier said without moving.

“Where’s Reynard?”

“He’s … he’s with his daughter. She was hurt in another operation.”

There was a brief whispered conversation among the shadowy figures.

“Where’s the passenger?” the same voice asked.

“Here. Next to me.”

“And the others, in the back?”

“They were the other operation,” Didier said. “We had to bring them.”

A few more brief words were exchanged outside.

“All right. Get out please, all of you.”

They climbed from the car and saw immediately that the person they had been conversing with was holding a sub-machinegun. “A present from our German friends,” he said as he saw Paul looking.

There were ten more men, some of them armed. They were all similarly dressed in belted jackets; dark, rough cotton shirts; serge trousers and heavy boots.

Paul found himself thinking that it looked like the beginning of some sort of uniform and was thrilled to realize that just as Henri had said, the Resistance movement was at last starting to take serious shape in southern France.

Didier went to speak. “I’m Di—”

“No introductions,” said the man who was obviously the leader of the group quickly. “We don’t need to know.”

Didier nodded. “Of course.”

Suddenly, the distant drone of an aircraft could be heard in the still night air, and instinctively they all looked upwards.

“He’s coming,” Didier whispered to Paul. “This is it.”

“Right on time,” the Resistance leader said. He turned to the other men. “Positions, everyone.”

The shadowy figures hurried away while the leader remained with Paul and the others.

“This has to be quick,” he said, “so be ready to run. He’ll be landing this way and coming towards us. As soon as he starts to turn, run for the plane; he won’t wait around. He’ll make the pick-up, taxi back and take off in the same direction as he landed.”

The plane was already turning for its landing approach.

“And there’ll be no time for long goodbyes,” the Resistance leader continued, “so you’d better say what you want to say while you can. I need to join my men. Remember, as soon as he stops, you start running.”