Kingdoms Fall - The Laxenburg Message (35 page)

           
“That little Frenchman was definitely not very French,” Gresham groaned.

           
Wilkins pushed the sedan as fast as it would go. Even though it was a
Mors
,
famous for their racing engines, it was an older model and could barely make a
breeze.

           
“I became suspicious myself when they separated us,” said Wilkins. “So I asked
the gendarme guarding me for a cigarette – in German. Before he realized what
he was doing, he had pulled out his tobacco. I immediately jumped and was able
to overpower him. After I had gotten his revolver, I found there were already
quite a few more men in the hall, and that’s when the shooting began.”

           
“Thank you, James, for getting me out,” Gresham said quietly. “This handgun I
took from the Frenchman, it’s a German Mauser.”

“And who was that woman?” Wilkins asked.

Before they could consider their escape
further, two speeding sedans came into view behind them. Wilkins pushed the
Mors
to its top speed. The driving was treacherous with ice on the road and
Wilkins struggled to keep the sedan under control.

The automobiles behind them struggled to keep
up. It was a long, slow and constant pursuit. Every time Wilkins managed to get
well ahead, the road would slow them down. They arrived in the town of Toul
only to get stuck at the small bridge and barely made it across before their
pursuers picked up their trail. But outside the little town of
Saint-Aubin-sur-Aire their luck finally escaped them, as the sedan carrying
Gresham and Wilkins hit a patch of ice and slid into a tree, cracking the front
axle. Gresham was slumped in the front seat and Wilkins climbed out of the automobile
as the two black sedans came to a stop only a few yards behind them.

Six men emerged from the sedans and approached,
halting as they saw Wilkins raise his handgun. One older man in a French
military uniform waved his hands. “
Écoutez
!” he yelled, “
nous ne
sommes pas des batards de Nancy. Nous allons vous emmener au Général Dupont. Il
vous attend. Nous avons eu des informations de Caire que vous viendriez à
Verdun
.”

Wilkins laughed with relief. “
Dieu merci,
mes amis
,” he said. “He says they are French officers, not with those men
in Nancy,” he called to Gresham. “Dupont had word of us from Cairo. We are to
go with them to Verdun.”

“Can you ask them if they have a medical kit?”
Gresham called back. “My arm is still bleeding like a damned spigot.”

           
Gresham, Wilkins and the French Colonel, Émile Driant, the man who had found
Gresham and Wilkins as they fled from Nancy, strode through the cloister of the
cathedral at Verdun. There was a cold light rain and heavy fog as their boots
splashed on the ancient stones.  Although a small city, Verdun had existed
for nearly two thousand years and its cathedral nearly that long. The men
passed out of the cloister and stopped at the building behind the cathedral and
entered. Inside they found a comfortable sitting room with a fire, food, and
wine. “Please make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,” said Colonel Driant. “I
will tell the Générals you are here.”

           
“Merci,” said Gresham, taxing the limit of his abilities with the French
language. Gresham was still badly hurt and would have preferred to go to sleep,
but he and Wilkins stepped to the table to pour themselves glasses of wine and
gather some of the bread, cheese, and cured meat onto the plates that had been
left for them. Even in war, the French ate well, thought Gresham. He sat gently
down in a chair next to the hearth; Wilkins pulled up a stool to sit right
beside him.

They were still gorging themselves when three
older senior officers entered the room with Colonel Driant. Two were heavily
decorated and appeared to be very serious and glum men. The third wore a
uniform with almost no decoration, and he appeared to be in quite good humor.
That officer came directly to shake hands with Gresham and Wilkins.

“Gentlemen, please remain seated; you have
earned your refreshment,” he said. “My name is Général Charles-Joseph Dupont. I
command the external intelligence services of France. I received a wire from
your colleague in Cairo stating that you would be entering France, and I
apologize that it was too late to greet you when you entered the country. And I
must further apologize for the unfortunate developments in Nancy. Needless to
say, we very much wish to locate the gentleman who attempted to confine you
there and I have a number of men out seeking him. But before we discuss that
further, allow me to introduce you to Général Fernand de Langle de Cary, the
commander of France’s Central Army Group, and Général Adolphe Guillaumat,
commander of the Second Army. They would like to hear from you, as well. Of
course you have met Colonel Driant, who undertook the effort to locate you
both.”

           
“
Messieurs
,” said Commander de Cary, “we are most anxious to know what
you have learned about the German plans for Verdun. We have learned from our
own spies that there are significant troop movements in the occupied sector
opposite Verdun, but we believed those were simply normal troop rotations. Are
they truly not?”

           
“Our information, Sir,” began Gresham, “comes from the very highest level of
the enemy’s government. We have learned that the German offensive at Verdun
will be commanded by Crown Prince William, but it was planned by von
Falkenhayn. The Germans intend to batter Verdun until the city collapses,
regardless of how long it takes. The attack is intended to bleed France white.
You see, von Falkenhayn chose Verdun because he believes France will not
surrender the city regardless of the price you must pay to keep it, yet it is a
difficult location for you to re-supply and reinforce. Crown Prince William’s
headquarters at Damvillers, by contrast, is well and easily supplied by
railway. The offensive was originally to begin in April, but the plans have
been accelerated due to the dry winter. On February 12, over 1,200 artillery
guns will open fire on Verdun and the defensive fortifications encircling the
city, followed by an attack of 140,000 men from the elite Hessian and
Brandenburger Corps. By the end of February, there will be 400,000 German
troops under William’s command at Damvillers, and over one million will be
brought up before the end of spring.”

           
“A million men,
mon Dieu
!” exclaimed Général Guillaumat. “The very life
of France is at stake.”

           
“You must understand,” said de Cary to Gresham and Wilkins, “there are only
30,000 French troops in Verdun right now,
messieurs
. As for the
fortifications that have saved this city so many times before, it was
determined last year that they will crumble under the new German heavy
artillery, so the decision was made to abandon them. They have been mostly
stripped of their guns and are barely defended now. So you see, there is almost
nothing we can do to prevent Crown Prince William from crossing the Meuse.”

           
“If the weather continues like this,” said Driant, “it will set the Crown
Prince back a week or two.

“Yes,” added Guillaumat. “In the meantime I
must appeal to Minister Gallieni to send more men as quickly as possible. You
know Joffre will not heed this warning; he is far too occupied developing his
own plans to assail the Germans at the Somme this summer. But von Falkenhayn is
correct: We cannot lose Verdun.”

           
“I quite agree,” said de Cary, “I will have Général Humbert bring up the Third
Army, but I must meet with Minister Gallieni at once. Messieurs, might I ask
you to remain in Verdun for a time, so that I can call upon you if there are
further questions?”

           
“If you will permit me, gentlemen, I can answer that question for you,” said
Dupont. “The wire I received from Cairo also contained instructions for these
gentlemen to remain in Verdun pending further orders. However, my friends, I
assure you that we will make your stay as pleasant as possible. Colonel Driant
will see to your needs; then he must return to his men in the Bois des Caures.”

           
“I, for one, shall be quite content to stay in Verdun for now,” said Wilkins.

           
“As you wish, Sir,” said Gresham.

           
“Very good. Now,
mes générals
, if you would allow me, I would like to
discuss the Nancy matter with these gentlemen, as there appears to be a German
agent loose in France and it is my responsibility to capture him.”

           
As the city of Verdun was slowly and quietly evacuated, Colonel Driant arranged
for Wilkins and Gresham to be billeted in a little house overlooking the Meuse
River. The ancient stone structure was quite comfortable, and they hired a very
pretty young Frenchwoman, whose husband had been killed at Artois, to tend to
the house and prepare their meals. Wilkins took a rather protective attitude
towards her and ate all his meals at the little house with her. After Gresham
had recovered from his beating at the hands of the little Frenchman’s brute, he
preferred to eat out, usually with the French troops at the café. The
Poilus,
the French soldiers called themselves, the “hairy ones,” because they were
battle-hardened veterans with long hair and greasy mustaches and rarely shaved.
They drank a cheap, raw red wine called Pinard and smoked cheap tobacco and
woodbines late into the night. They had all seen fierce battles already, and
the French Generals knew these men would stand their ground when the shells
began to fall on the city.

As February 12 arrived, the weather worsened
and so it seemed likely the German offensive would indeed be delayed. Commander
de Cary had obtained the support of Minister Gallieni to reinforce Verdun, but
General Joseph Joffre, Chief of the General Staff and the highest military
authority in France, was being difficult – he wanted the extra men for his own
offensive planned for the Somme. Still, a number of divisions from the French
First and Fifth Army were quickly transferred to Verdun and in a few days the
garrison was brought up to 200,000 men. General Humbert had been given acting
command of the Verdun forces, and he immediately established a supply line to
Bar-Le-Duc, where the nearest train line was located. The
Poilus
called
the road the
Voie Sacrée
, the Sacred Way. As the city filled with small
details of machine gun detachments, signaling parties, squads of stretcher
bearers, artillery, miners, bombers and other army units, it was clear the army
was preparing for imminent battle.

           
Gresham found Wilkins one dark, cold, raining morning in the cathedral.

           
“Have you started praying now, James?  I don’t think things are quite that
bleak.”

           
“I am not quite religious enough to believe that the fate of Verdun hinges upon
my prayers, my friend.”

           
“Are you personally troubled?”

           
“I must tell you, David, I have been playing spy now for four months, and it
simply wears my nerves to tatters. This job is very tiring, and I sometimes
doubt that I may buckle up. It seems there is a constant risk of some little
thing going off, and I can’t quite get adjusted to it.”

           
“Well I wouldn’t call our business a rest-cure at any time, but as far as
things go, I think we’ve had it fairly easy compared to those who live in the
trenches. Look at the
Poilu
here. The poor fellows know that soon the
German guns will be raining shells down upon them for weeks, maybe months, and
their job will be to bear it, to stand firm, and try not to be killed. Yet they
drink and laugh today. Whereas, you and I, we’ve only got to act natural and
play along.”

           
“And you find it no difficulty at all?”

“Where I’ve found the job tight was when I had
to act natural, the same as everybody else around, while all the time I knew I
would have to do things that were unnatural. It isn’t easy . . . it isn’t easy
to hold a woman in your arms knowing that in a few hours you will take her last
breath from her.”

           
“Yet somehow you keep a part of yourself clean, outside that daily life,”
Wilkins said.

           
“No. I have never tried that, James, to be honest. I’ve just tried to stay my
ordinary self. And who that person is, well, perhaps he is not a person that
most would admire, I admit. But I can see you have tried, James, and I guess
you have found it wearing.”

           
“Wearing is a mild word.”

           
“Then perhaps you should give it up as a bad job, this attempt to keep a part
of yourself lily-white. None of us will come out of this war without a little
dirt and a few wounds, and I mean more than just scars to frighten the
children.”

           
“No, David, I disagree. Not about the wounds, I don’t argue with you there. But
you are different from me. You came into this war wounded.”

“There’s no cause for you to be cruel.”

“That is not what I mean: You were already
‘experienced,’ damaged by a cruel and unjust world, you have already been
forced to survive on your wits. It is plain to see that you are now quite
flattered to be relied upon to do those tasks that you are able to perform so
well. And now you are ready to act because you believe the result being sought
is a just result. But I tell you plainly, you place too much faith in those who
are deciding what constitutes a just result. The men in London who assign these
tasks - who are they to make these decisions? How can they possibly know what
will come of it? Is there not a small part of you deep down that wonders if
those decisions are right or wrong?”