The Complete Navarone (72 page)

Mallory said, ‘Neutral is neutral.’

‘But submarines are submarines,’ said Andrea, quietly.

And as he so often did, Andrea made everything clear in Mallory’s mind.

For a moment he was not in this fisherman’s cottage, with the gale nudging the tiles, and the stove hissing, and the sentries on the quay and the pillbox on the hill. He was back in that briefing room in the villa on the square at Termoli, hot and cool at the same time, tracing the veins in the marble of the columns. It had sounded like a throwaway line then:
You’ll be absolutely on your own
, Jensen had said.

But of course, that was what Jensen had to say. Jensen could not order an operation against a neutral country.

There would be no RAF. No support of any kind. The Storm Force was absolutely on its own.

‘What the hell is this about?’ said Miller.

‘We get to blow up some submarines,’ said Mallory. ‘Very, very quietly.’

‘Oh,’ said Miller, with the air of a man saved from a great disappointment. ‘Is that right? I thought maybe Spain being nootral and all, you know? Fine.’

Mallory poured himself more wine, and lit a cigarette. It was at times like this that he knew he would never be anything but a simple soldier. Jensen had stuck knives between German ribs, and slipped bromide in the wine of Kapitän Langsdorff of the pocket battleship
Graf Spee
the night before she was scuttled. But he was also a diplomat; it was rumoured that he had been offered the crown of Albania, and to many Bedouin chieftains he was the official voice of the British Empire.

This business bore all the hallmarks of Jensen at his devious best. And perhaps the imprint of another hand, more powerful, normally seen clamped round a huge Havana cigar.

Spain’s neutrality was at best idiosyncratic. Twenty thousand Spaniards were fighting for Hitler on the Russian Front. The German consulate in Tangier – a Spanish possession – monitored Allied shipping movements in the Straits of Gibraltar. And Spanish wolfram provided a vital raw material for German steelworks.

But the British ambassador in Madrid, Sir Samuel Hoare, was prepared to ignore all this hostile activity in the name of keeping lines of communication open. He had set his face firmly against SOE operations in Spain, for fear of being compromised.

So Hoare would have been kept in the dark about the Storm Force. This operation was not just to prevent a repaired Werwolf pack carving a terrible swathe through an invasion fleet in the Channel. It was to send a signal over Hoare’s head to Franco. To tell the Spanish dictator that the Allies knew just how far he was bending the rules, and to give him an object lesson as to the kind of thing he could expect if the rule-bending continued.

As long as Storm Force achieved its objectives.

If it failed …

Mallory lit another cigarette, and tried not to think of being paraded through the streets of Madrid as a saboteur, an infringer of the rights of a neutral state.

Out of the question.

Damn you, Captain Lord Nelson Jensen.

He ground out his cigarette in his wine glass. He said, ‘We’ll be needing a map.’

Hugues and Lisette had been having a difficult evening. The inspection of their papers by the roadside had passed off well enough: the Germans seemed to be in too much of a hurry for more than a perfunctory cross-examination of an obviously pregnant woman and her lover. There was, after all, a dead SS patrol in the mountains, and justice to be done.

But Hugues was rattled. Was it possible that Lisette was a traitor? Knowingly, no. Unknowingly … yes, it was possible.

Hugues made his decision. The operation must continue without them. He took Lisette by the arm. They turned back, towards the middle of town. They had been a pair of lovers out for a stroll, and had been overtaken by the rain and the approaching curfew. What could be more natural than that they should now head home?

‘Where do we go?’ said Lisette.

Hugues forced a smile. ‘To make contact with our other friends,’ he said.

So they walked back to the Café de L’Océan, and Lisette sat gratefully at a table while Hugues ordered two
coups de rouge
, and wondered what the hell they did next.

The café had emptied out. It was blowing half a gale now, and flurries of wind agitated the puddles in the road leading down to the port. But the Commandant was still at the bar, speaking in a low, warlike voice to the barman, who was looking sceptical. He glanced round at Hugues, caressed his strawberry nose at Lisette, and returned to his conversation.

A hundred metres away, on the quay, two men in raincoats were talking quietly in German. ‘She went in,’ one of them said. ‘The man with her.’

‘Did she make any other contacts?’

‘Not that I saw. I lost her for twenty minutes.’

‘Scheisse,’
said the taller of the two men. ‘It’ll be curfew in a moment, and we’ll lose her completely. I think it is time to start our hare.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Flush her out, and see where she runs.’

‘Ah.’

They walked into the house of M. Walvis, the undertaker, who was a nark for the Milice, the Vichy police. The taller of the two picked up the telephone and jiggled the cradle. When the operator answered, the man said in his heavily-accented French, ‘Give me the garrison commander.’

There was a pause while the switchboard operator plugged him in on her board. Then a harsh German voice said,
‘Wer da?’

‘Café de l’Océan,’ said the man. ‘Immediately.’ He hung up.

The garrison commander hung up too. At the telephone exchange, the operator released the breath she had been holding while she listened to the conversation, and reached for her plugs.

Two minutes later, the telephone at the Café de l’Océan rang. A woman’s voice said, ‘Fire at the Mairie.’

‘Merde,’
said the man behind the bar.
‘Les boches arrivent.’

Hugues had been expecting this moment, he realised. But now that it was upon him, he was paralysed. Being with those soldiers had taken away his willpower.

Not that willpower was any help, in a situation like this.

He stood irresolute, sweating. ‘Lisette,’ he said. ‘Hide yourself.’

‘No need,’ said the barman, wiping his fat hands on his gigantic apron. ‘Our friend in the telephone exchange gives us ten minutes’ warning.’ He poured himself a small Cognac. ‘Drink?’

The Commandant twirled his moustache, and accepted a Cognac for himself. ‘At moments like this,’ he said, ‘it is vital to steady the nerves.’

Hugues was beside himself.
‘Non,’
he said. Was this walrus-faced cretin seriously proposing to sit here and wait to be shot? These were
résistants
. If Lisette was found in their company, she would be arrested again. And there was the matter of his papers. His papers would never stand up under detailed scrutiny –

A roaring and clanging sounded in the street outside. With a squeal of tyres, an ancient fire engine skidded to a halt on the cobbles. The Commandant finished his drink and said, ‘All aboard!’ Leaping into the passenger seat, he clapped a huge brass helmet on his head.

‘Allez-y,’
said the barman.

Hugues stared at him. The barman made shooing movements with his fat hands.
‘Vite,’
he said. Lisette’s hand grasped Hugues’. ‘Come,’ she said. The Commandant was beckoning with arthritic sweeps of his arm. She hustled Hugues out and into the cab. The fire engine took off.

There seemed to be seven or eight other men on the engine, all elderly. ‘Where are we going?’ said Hugues to the Commandant.

‘The hour has come,’ said the Commandant. ‘We go to assist our friends the English.’

‘No,’ said Hugues. ‘You must not.’

‘And why?’ roared the Commandant, alcoholically. ‘Every man on this engine has fought for
la patrie
at the Marne. We are ready to fight and die. For the glory of France. Not for your damned Lenin,
nom d’un nom –
’

Hugues said, ‘It must be said that I am not a Leninist.’ Stupid old man, he was thinking. Café firebrand –

‘Sir,’ said the Commandant, drawing himself up. ‘I am a soldier. We are all soldiers, and we are fighting an honest war, face to face with the enemy, honourably, not hole-in-corner. Seventy men, hand-picked, will at dawn be rallying to the house of Guy Jamalartégui. The time has come.’

Hugues opened his mouth to tell him that he should keep his childish fantasies to himself. But Lisette got there before him. She said in a conciliatory voice, ‘You cannot do this.’

The Commandant raised a hoary eyebrow that fluttered with the speed of the hurtling engine. ‘Cannot? Madame, I must tell you that at the Marne, I and thirty of my comrades held our redoubt for three days against a regiment of Boches. Nothing has changed.’

‘Mon Commandant,’
said Lisette. ‘I will place confidence in you. What I am about to tell you is of the highest importance, a great secret.’ The parts of the Commandant’s face not concealed by the slipstream-whipped expanses of his moustache were pinkening with pleasure. ‘You will endanger an important Allied mission.’

‘My little cabbage, I thank you,’ said the Commandant. ‘I accept your secret. Do not bother your pretty head with it further. And if you please, Mademoiselle, do not speak to me of fighting and other things you do not understand. A woman’s place is in the bedroom and the kitchen.’ He pinched her cheek. ‘Leave this to the men.’

The crack of Lisette’s palm on his ear was audible even over the sound of the bell.
‘Vieux con!’
she said. ‘Buffoon! At least do not arrive in your stupid fire engine.’

‘Monsieur,’
said Hugues. ‘This lady has only this morning escaped the clutches of the Gestapo, while you have been in the café since lunchtime.’

The fire engine was bowling along the southern side of the port. It was raining. From some secret locker in the back, one of the
ex-poilus
had hauled out rifles of ancient design. ‘We also fight, who sit in the café,’ said the Commandant sulkily, rubbing his ear. On the far side of the harbour, a few fishing boats were tied up at the town quay. Behind them, two large grey trucks were moving through the twilight.

‘Look,’ said Hugues, pointing. ‘They are following us. I beg you. You are endangering this British operation. Secrecy is vital –’

The Commandant said, as if scoring a debating point, ‘It is you that they are following.’

Lisette said,
‘Mon Commandant
, the end result will be the same.’

‘I will not skulk,’ said the Commandant. ‘I am not listening to you.’

The road left the shore and began to wind uphill between small houses.
‘Bien,’
said Lisette, between clenched teeth. ‘In that case, there is only one solution.’ She reached forward, twitched the key from the fire engine’s ignition, and flung it as far as she could into the bushes that lined the road.

‘Now run,’ said Lisette.

She jumped from the cab. Hugues went after her. She ran well, for a woman who was eight months pregnant. My God, thought Hugues, this is certainly a remarkable woman. He had never loved her as much as he loved her then.

For they were free, she and he. She had left the Commandant, that old fool of a Commandant, to divert the pursuit. The Commandant would get himself killed, and the knowledge of Guy Jamalartégui’s address would die with him. And he and Lisette and their child could go to Rue du Port in Martigny, safe from pursuit, and reunite themselves with the English. And Lisette and the child would be safe again.

War was war. But Lisette was what mattered.

It was getting dark; it was after curfew, and the port of Martigny would certainly be guarded. But what other option was there?

At the top of the hill he paused and looked back the way they had come. Three broad-bottomed veterans of the Marne were head down in the bushes, looking for the keys. Beside him, Lisette was making a peculiar sound, as if she was weeping.

But she was not weeping. She was laughing.

Hugues took her hand and started walking uphill at a brisk clip. After five minutes there was firing behind them. Good, thought Hugues. So far, so good.

‘Nice place,’ said Dusty Miller. ‘Sea views. Sheltered bathing.’

They were looking at an Admiralty chart spread out on the scrubbed pine planks of the kitchen table of Guy Jamalartégui. It showed a coastline, steep-to, indented with small, stony coves exposed to the huge bight of the Bay of Biscay. But in the centre of that stretch of coast was something different.

In the times when the world was molten and rocks flowed like water, a huge geyser of liquid stone had forced itself through and at an angle to the other strata. Now, that great irruption of granite formed a peninsula that flung a protecting arm round the bay of San Eusebio. The arm was marked Cabo de la Calavera.

At its entrance, the bay was not more than a hundred yards wide; but inside, it broadened into a two-mile oval of water, deepening to twenty fathoms. The village of San Eusebio was on the landward side of the bay. On the tip of the peninsula, the chart said FORTALEZA: fortress. Below the fortress were buildings, with a note that said CHIMNEY CONSPIC.