The '44 Vintage (26 page)

“Yes, I do know better.
Sie haben Wichtigeres zu tun—
so
we are lucky.” Grafenberg looked at Audley. “And now?”

As Butler turned towards Audley there was a sharp double
crack
behind him. Audley jumped as though he’d been shot.

“The Frenchman!” exclaimed Winston.

They all looked down the road towards the burning Kübel, from which the sound had come. Pierrot was bending over a body at the side of the road, fifty yards away, and as they looked at him he turned. For a moment he stared at them, straightening up slowly, then he started to run back down the road away from them.

Audley took a step forwards, fumbling at his holster, and then stopped as Pierrot left the road to zigzag among the trees.

“Yeah … that’s right, Lieutenant,” murmured Winston. “You can maybe run after him, but you sure aren’t going to hit him with that thing.”

Audley watched the departing figure dwindle in the distance.

“So now we’d better stir our asses to get someplace else, huh?” Winston’s voice was suddenly gentler and more encouraging—so much so that Butler looked at him with surprise. “It’ll take him an hour or two to find his buddies. We could still get lucky.”

For the first time Butler saw Winston not just as an American and a foreigner, but as a senior NCO who—no matter what army he belonged to—had the job of jollying along young men like Audley when they no longer knew what to do. And it was his own plain duty no less to support the sergeant.

“The car, sir—“ he said quickly.

“—Isn’t going anywhere,” snapped Winston. “It’s a goddamn miracle it got us where it did.”

Audley straightened up. “And you’re back with us, Sergeant?”

Winston grinned horribly. “Seems I got no choice, Lieutenant sir … so—which way?” He pointed up the road.

Audley looked round, squinting up at the sun. “South—then southeast,” he said.

“Yes …” Winston nodded patiently. “But where to, Lieutenant?”

Audley stared southwards without answering, as though he hadn’t heard the question.

Winston waited for a moment or two, and then moved round to block the subaltern’s view. “Lieutenant, we have to have some kind of plan, for God’s sake. We have to know where we’re going—or at least: we have to know whether we’re still chasing the major or just running away from the frogs. So you tell us, huh?”

“Yes—“ Audley roused himself. “Yes, of course.”

“Okay.” The American paused. “So?”

Audley drew a deep breath. “About fifteen kilometres south of here— or it may be southeast… and it may be more than fifteen kilometres, but we should be able to pick up the signposts if we keep going …” he frowned.

“Yes?”

“There’s a village called La Roche Tourtenay—it’s off the road to Loches somewhere. And the Chateau Le Chais d’Auray is a mile to the west of it.”

“The chateau—? Is that where the major’s heading?”

“No.” Audley shook his head. “But that’s where we’re going, Sergeant.”

“Why there?”

“Wait and see.” Audley turned decisively to Butler. “Get your Sten, Corporal … Hauptmann—I’m sorry about the handcuffs. But we’ll deal with them when we get to Le Chais d’Auray.”

Sergeant Winston stood unmoving in front of Audley.

“You know this place—the Chateau Shay-dough-ray?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“You’ve known it all along?”

“Yes.”

“And we’ve been heading for it from the start—but you just forgot to tell us. Is that it?”

“No. That isn’t it at all, Sergeant.”

“So why are we heading for it now, then?”

“Why?” Audley closed his eyes for a second. “If you were on the run back in Texas—“

“Chicago, Illinois. And Jesus!—I wish I was there now!”

“Chicago, Illinois. If you were on the run in Chicago, Illinois—on the run from the gangsters, Sergeant … would you go home to your parents?”

“Hell no! Not unless—“ Winston stopped.

“Not unless you were desperate. Not unless you’d tried everything else.” Audley regarded the American stonily. “So I am desperate now— and I can’t think of anything else. So I’m going home.”

How Second Lieutenant Audley came home again

BUTLER LAY
exhausted among the vines on the edge of the track to the Chateau Le Chais d’Auray, watching the moonlight polish the dark slates on the little conical tower nearest to him.

The important thing was not to go to sleep, he decided.

They had marched the day into the afternoon, and the afternoon into the evening, and the evening into the night.

First they had force-marched out of necessity, simply to put distance between themselves and the scene of the air strike.

Then they had settled into the rhythm of a route march, by side roads and country tracks, and over fields to skirt round villages, and through hedges and thickets to avoid prying eyes.

But a route march was no problem: it was what a soldier’s legs were for, and the farmlands of Touraine were nothing to a soldier who had trained on the high moors of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the mountains of Wales.

Yet each five-minute halt was a little more welcome than the last one. And after each halt it took a little longer to get back into the rhythm. And so, by slow degrees, the route march became an endurance test.

But at least they were going somewhere at last, because Second Lieutenant Audley studied each signpost and changed direction accordingly.

And once, when they surprised a small boy beside a fish-pond, Audley exchanged their last slab of ration chocolate for a pointing finger.

Loches?

That way
, the finger pointed.

La Roche?

That way.

Channay-les Pins?

That way.

The urchin never said a word from first to last, and scuttled away smartly as they set out for Channay. After which they retraced their steps and headed for La Roche.

Audley didn’t trust anyone any more, not even small boys.

Or German captains.

“Hauptmann …” Audley seemed embarrassed. The great bruise on his cheek was less black now, more like a dark stain half camouflaged by dust and sweat.

The German stirred nervously where he lay, brushing at his hair with his chained hands. “Lieutenant?”

“There are … some things we have to get quite clear.”

“Some things?” the German swallowed nervously. “What things, please?”

“The Frenchman said you were in the plot against Hitler. But you’ve said that you weren’t.” Audley paused, then pointed to the handcuffs. “So why are you wearing those?”

“Yeah.” Winston rolled sideways from where he’d flopped down exhausted a moment before. He held up his head with one hand and started to massage his thigh with the other. “I’d like to get the answer to that too, Captain.”

The German looked from one to the other. “I have given you my
parole—
my word of honour.”

“That’s right—so you did.” The American nodded. “But I heard tell that all you boys swear an oath to the Führer. Like a word of honour, huh?” He nodded again. “And that makes you a kind of a problem to us.”

“How … a kind of problem, please?”

“Well now … it wouldn’t be a problem if you had tried to give the Führer the business, like the Frenchman said you had. Because then you’d be on our side, because that ‘ud be the only side you’d got left. But that’s where the problem starts.”

“Please?” The German turned towards Audley. “I will keep my word—as a German officer.”

“That’s exactly what’s worrying me.” Winston rubbed his thigh harder. “Because that Frenchman wasn’t kidding us. He looked at those papers, and he went off the boil about you and he was ready to get back to the main business of shitting
us
up. But now you say that’s all baloney, you never touched the Führer … so if those cuffs aren’t for that—if they’re just for screwing the general’s daughter, or stealing the PX blind, or something—then like the Frenchman said, which word of honour are you going to stick to if we meet up with any of your buddies? The Führer’s word—or our word, hey?” He stopped rubbing his thigh and pointed his finger at Audley. “Right, Lieutenant?”

“Yes … well, broadly speaking …” Audley watched the German, “… right.”

For a moment the young German said nothing. Then he squared his shoulders defiantly. “If that is what you think, Lieutenant—“ he began reproachfully.

“No.” Audley cut him off. “It isn’t as simple as that. I was quite prepared—damn it, perfectly prepared—to take your word for
us
. But if we go on now to … where we’re going … then other people could be involved. And I don’t have the right to risk them—not on your word, or my word, or anyone’s word.”

Chateau Le Chais d’Auray, thought Butler quickly. Audley had let slip that name when the sergeant had pressed him for their destination. And he had let it slip in the German’s presence, that was what had been distracting him.

So now they couldn’t leave him, they had to either shoot him or take him with them. And if they took him with them they needed to trust him.

Butler stared at the young German with a curious sense of detachment. This, he told himself, was a genuine, one-hundred-per-cent German soldier, one of the species he’d been trained and primed to kill on sight without a second thought. The boy even
looked
like a German —even in his rumpled, sweat-stained uniform and without his officer’s hat he still looked a lot more like a German than the fat soldier with the loaves in Sermigny.

So now, although we
just don
’
t kill prisoners
and a few hours ago they would have fought for that principle, what would he do if Audley was to say
shoot him
?

He would do it, of course.

The German was staring at him.

“I was on the Eastern Front, with my battalion … in the 4th Army, near Vitebsk. An anti-tank battalion … in April I was promoted and sent on a special course at home, at—at home—on the use of the new Jagdpanzers … I saw my father, who was on the staff of Admiral Canaris. And my brother, my elder brother, who worked for General Olbricht, also in Berlin …

“Halfway through the course I was posted to the staff of General von Stulpnagel in Paris … which I did not understand—killing tanks I understand, not paper-work. So I asked for a combat posting—if not to the Jagdpanzers, at least to one of the 8.8-centimetre gun battalions on the West Wall. They sent me to Nantes, to report on the state of the landward defences—the landward defences! ‘Landward defences—none.’ Then I am in command of … of transport despatch. I count horses into trains—the Amis bomb the trains, the French steal the horses. I am trained to destroy Josef Stalins, and I count horses—“

(“Tough shit,” murmurs Sergeant Winston. “I’m trained to blow up blockhouses.”)

“Then there is the
attentat
of the second July—we heard the Führer’s voice on the radio that night—I am in Nantes, counting horses …”

(“Safest place to be,” murmurs Sergeant Winston.)

(“Shut up,” says Second Lieutenant Audley.)

“Then General Olbricht is executed … and I am afraid for my brother, that he will be unjustly suspected. And also Admiral Canaris is arrested … I am afraid for my father too. Even more afraid, for I have heard him speak criticisms, even before the war.

“Then General von Stulpnagel is executed. And he has been a friend of my father, also from before the war.”

(“Wow-ee,” murmurs Sergeant Winston. “Now it’s really getting close to home … except that you’re just still counting horses’ legs and dividing by four, huh?”)

“And … at last I get a letter from my father. It was delivered to me by a man I do not know, but he is an
Ahwehr
officer I think … This is … maybe two weeks ago. But it is written, the letter, on nineteenth July—“

(Hauptmann Grafenberg is speaking so softly now, almost whispering, that Butler has to move closer to hear his words. The German does not notice this at first, he is speaking to the ground in front of him now; when he finally does he clears his throat and speaks up; but not for long, and soon he is whispering again.)

“He says that if I receive this letter—when I receive it—he will be dead. And my brother too.

“But to tell me that is not the reason for which he writes, it is to tell me that I must go north to Normandy with the next convoy—that I can do that easily because I am the transportation officer, and I have the necessary documentation. And when I am in Normandy I must pass through the lines and surrender myself to the first Americans I meet—“

And after that they had gone, with Audley setting the pace as though he was determined to outmarch them all.

And then the endurance test became a nightmare.

The side of Butler’s head had started to ache again and his toes began to itch inside his boot. He could also feel with every other step the impression which his Sten had punched into his buttock, where he had fallen on it in the staff car.

All of which was compounded by the confusion of his feelings over the German—

(Bayonet practice:
What the fucking hell are you doing, son—yoking that sandbag like you were sorry for it? That’s not a sandbag, son— that only looks like a sandbag. THAT’S A BLOODY GERMAN, THAT IS! He’ll rape your mother, he’ll rape your sister, AND BY GOD IF YOU DONT WATCH OUT HE’LL RAPE YOU! So you’re here to stick your hayonet in his guts and your butt plate in his teeth and your boot in his balls, and I want to hear you yell with joy when you do it—AND DON’T YOU DARE BE SORRY FOR HIM OR I’LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO BE SORRY ABOUT!)

“But why didn’t you get out while you could, then?” Audley had asked. “Why did you wait for the Gestapo to come for you?”

“You heard what the man said,” Sergeant Winston had answered for the German. “Because he hadn’t done anything—he’d counted his horses, like a good little boy—“

Not true, Butler thought. Or not the whole truth.

The whole truth was that when the utterly unbelievable happened ordinary blokes didn’t believe it, not until it was too late. The only thing they could think of doing was nothing at all—they just stood around like bullocks waiting their turn outside the municipal slaughterhouse.