Leon Uris (29 page)

On the journey Robert Proust had proved the weakest of the three, tiring, becoming dejected, complaining of hunger constantly.

Jacques Granville, the eldest, kept up their spirits. He was a born
bon vivant,
even in their miserable circumstances always seeking out a bed partner where they hid, in the haylofts, the open fields, or the cellars of peasants’ homes. It seemed that if there was a woman to be found, Jacques would find her.

Beyond the Pyrenees was Spain and perhaps a path to the French Vichy forces of Admiral de St. Amertin based in Casablanca. They were certain that someday these French forces would quit Vichy and turn and fight the Germans.

There was another group now based in London. General Pierre La Croix, whom they had heard on the clandestine radio, had denounced Vichy and the Pétain regime and had actually rallied a number of the French possessions to his Committee for the Defense of the French Empire. They called themselves the Free French or Fighting France.

Certainly Pierre La Croix had more appeal to the three comrades, but it seemed impossible to reach him, so their goal became Casablanca and Admiral de St. Amertin.

Cambo was filled with tuberculars from all over Europe. Although the three of them carried false medical certificates stating that they had TB, too many escapees had passed the same route with the same story. It was certain they would be found out.

For a week they were unable to make a contact. Their money was depleted and it was impossible to cross the mountains without a guide.

In desperation André went to the church and in the secrecy of the confessional booth spoke to the priest.

“Father,” he said, “I am in Cambo with two comrades trying to escape to Spain.”

“For what purpose?”

“To fight for France.”

“Why are you fleeing? The truth.”

“We are wanted by the Germans for helping Jews escape to Vichy France.”

“Yes. News of you is known. It will only be a matter of a day or two and the police will come for you. You must get out of Cambo.”

“Please help us. We are out of funds.”

“That is your problem.”

“But, Father ...” André said harshly in disbelief.

“I’m fed up with the flood of escaped criminals descending on Cambo.”

“Father! We are not criminals.”

“If the law wants you, you are criminals. Either be out of Cambo by morning or I will turn you in to the police.”

“Father! We are Frenchmen!”

“Get out.”

André reeled from the church, running back to their pension. He tore up the stairs panting, flung the door open.

“The priest threatens to give us up to the police!”

Robert Proust trembled, then sat and wept.

“Shut up, Robert!” Jacques ordered. “God, let me think ... that bastard ... that bastard!”

There was a sharp knock on the door. They all looked to it in terror.

A
NDRÉ OPENED THE DOOR
. They saw a small, stout man who gave off an air of professional eminence.

“I am Dr. Aumont,” he said, “the director of one of the sanitariums. May I come in?”

The curious visitor looked from one to the other. “You boys are escapees, are you not?”

There was no answer.

“Come, come now,” Dr. Aumont said, “I’m not going to turn you over to the police.”

André ignored Jacques’ shake of the head. “What does it matter, Jacques? Yes, we are escapees.”

“For what reason?”

“We are from along the Cher River. Our underground took Jews over to Vichy.”

“All right, boys, you can be easy. I am the head of a group here in Cambo who keep an eye open for escapees. We have set up a fund to help our boys get to the fighting forces.”

André leaned his face against the windowframe and the cheap lace curtain brushed against his beard and tears came to his eyes. “Thank God there are some decent Frenchmen left.”

“All right, boys, you must leave immediately ... now. You will make it to the village of Espelette. It will take several hours. Find the Berhard Inn. A waitress there named Geneviéve will find you a hiding place and will obtain a Basque guide to take you over the mountains.”

“Dr. Aumont, I can’t tell you ...”

“No time to tell anyone anything. Who is the leader?”

The other two nodded toward Jacques Granville. He handed Jacques a packet of bills, a hundred and fifty dollars in American money, and explained their worth in francs.

“Now you must bargain hard with the Basque guide,” Dr. Aumont instructed. “He will take you over for thirty dollars a head, but halfway through the passes he will try to extort more money out of you on the threat of leaving you alone in the mountains. Give him a few more dollars and promise him a few more when you reach Spain, but hide part of the money. I suggest you tie it around your waist. Well, good luck.”

They found Geneviéve in the Berhard Inn, and she fed them and hid them in a corncrib. All save Jacques, to whom she took an immediate liking. He had another bed for the night.

At the first light of dawn, a gruff, blocklike, leather-faced man dressed in heavy sheepskin and fur leggings appeared at the corncrib.

“I am Ezkanazi, Basque guide. I take you to Spain. Three thousand francs each before we start.”

As good Frenchmen they bartered and bickered before they struck a deal. Geneviéve fixed them each a small sack of cheese, bread, and a bottle of wine. The party then headed toward the bleak, foreboding mountains.

The smuggler trails known to centuries of Basques were made for goats rather than men. They climbed into the jagged wilderness with a howling wind beating the warmth from their bodies. Breathing became a struggle as they ascended higher and higher to the fringes of eternal Silowfielus.

The Basque cursed at their slowness but to no avail. By late afternoon, Robert Proust slumped to the ground, a beaten man. Heart pounding, throat caked from dryness, he mumbled that he could not go on.

Jacques and André dragged him to his feet. Then Jacques punctured him in the seat of the pants with a hypodermic needle that Dr. Aumont had given him filled with caffeine to sustain energy.

Darkness crept over the mountaintops. Ezkanazi stopped.

“More money,” he said.

They argued frantically.

“More dollars or I leave you here to find your own way.”

Jacques handled the situation masterfully, and paid some and promised some. The Basque snatched the money angrily and grumbled, then led them off the path into a high pasture where they came to an abandoned shepherd’s hut.

A fire was built and they nibbled listlessly at their food. Robert was shivering and moaned himself into a fitful sleep filled with high-altitude hallucinations.

André and Jacques took turns sleeping and sitting with their backs propped against the door, so the Basque would not try to escape.

The next day when they reached a small farm and were shown to the corncrib, Robert was in bad condition, feverish, hacking and spitting. André and Jacques took shifts in soaking his forehead with wet rags and pleading with him to hang on for one more day. The night seemed utterly without end. The corncrib offered small protection against the elements. They greeted the morning in a stupor.

Ezkanazi appeared and ordered them to come into the farmer’s house. A pine-box coffin sat in the center of the floor filled with smuggler’s booty. It was nailed shut and sat on a pair of poles.

“We are in Spain,” the Basque said tersely. “The four of us will carry the coffin to the cemetery in the town of Elizondo. The border guards and police will pass you as family.”

Jacques collected the identification papers of his two friends and burned them along with his own in the stove on orders received in what seemed ages ago in Bordeaux.

They descended to Elizondo holding the coffin on their shoulders in a mock funeral. Robert staggered along with them. A few moments after they entered the cemetery, they were ordered to take off through a rear gate

They made for the road. A half-mile outside Elizondo, four cars filled with Spanish border police descended on them bearing sub-machine guns. They were arrested and driven away.

T
HEY WERE FLUNG INTO
the dungeon of a medieval prison and fed gruel and water once a day. The Spaniards refused to respond to a plea for a doctor for Robert.

At the end of a week they were removed in wretched condition to the penitentiary at Pamplona, where, at last, Robert was taken to the sick ward. Each of them had lost some fifty pounds in weight and was a sorry, weak specimen of the human race.

Their interrogation was perfunctory, for many others had come their route. They made the standard claim of being French-Canadians and were placed in the cell block that held a hundred other French escapees also claiming to be Canadians.

The penitentiary was a large affair crammed with Loyalist prisoners of the Civil War. Spanish sentiments were openly pro-German, with a Spanish Blue Division fighting on the Eastern Front against the Russians. The prison authorities dealt particularly harshly with the French, affording them a life of bare existence.

As weeks passed, Robert slowly regained some strength, but they all wallowed in futility. The only ray of hope came when Jacques was permitted to write a letter to the mysterious Miss Florence Smith at the British Embassy in Madrid.

When all hope seemed gone, a sudden wildfire of rumor swept the escapees’ cell. It was true! A British-American delegation appeared in Pamplona to fulfill a deal made with the Spanish government to release the prisoners in exchange for a shipment of wheat and flour.

They were to leave in groups. Jacques and André went to the Americans and asked that Robert be allowed to go first because he needed medical attention. And so the comrades were separated. Two weeks after Robert had departed they received a short letter from him.

DEAR JACQUES AND ANDRÉ,

I am at an enormous camp at Miranda de Ebro. It not only holds military escapees but thousands of Jews who have fled from Holland, Poland, Belgium, and, oh yes, France. By wonderful coincidence I’ve run into a few we took over the Cher River.

There is a permanent British-American committee bartering for our release, and we all feel there is a chance to get to North Africa.

I look for your arrival every day. Please get word to me through the Red Cross office.

I am sorry to cut this short, but they are only allowing a single-page letter. Life is marginal, but I am feeling much better.

Your devoted comrade,

ROBERT

André and Jacques were not to follow to Miranda de Ebro. Their train terminated at the spa of Arnedillo, where a number of smaller hotels and pensions had been leased by the British and Americans, who continued to pay ransom to the Spanish government.

In Arnedillo they were instructed not to try to escape, for if they did it would jeopardize the entire program. Under this honorary parole they were allowed to mingle with tourists from all over Spain who had come to the famous mud baths for therapeutic treatment.

One day André was walking past the ultraposh Balneario Hotel.

“You there,” a voice called.

He looked up to a balcony, where a heavy-set, middle-aged man stood wearing a magnificent velour smoking jacket.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Are you one of the internees?” he asked, speaking perfect French.

“Yes.”

“By any chance do you or any of your comrades play bridge?”

“Yes, I play.”

“We’re short a hand. Would you mind sitting in?”

“Why not?”

André felt awkward and shabby in the splendor of the Balneario as he found his way to the man’s suite. The stranger introduced himself as Victor Thibaud, a Frenchman whose business interests had been centered in Spain for a decade. André reckoned from the size of the suite and the stones in Monsieur Thibaud’s rings that his business was considerable.

Madame Thibaud, he explained, was at the mud baths a good deal of the time and he was constantly looking for a bridge partner.

A snobbish-appearing but quite lovely girl, perhaps twenty, came into the parlor wearing riding habit.

“My daughter, Nicole.”

She nodded curtly. “I’ll be at the Valdez Ranch, Papa. They are running new bulls. I hear some are magnificent.”

As André’s eyes followed her, Monsieur Thibaud curtly announced his daughter was engaged to a member of an important Spanish banking family.

“Well now, young man. What kind of a game do you play?”

“Fair,” André said, “just fair.”

“We’ll be a team. Try not to lose me too much money.”

That night at El Torito Cafe, hangout of the French prisoners, André spoke excitedly to Jacques.

“It’s a cinch,” he said, “an absolute cinch. My father taught me to play bridge before I could walk. We were district champions five years running. These Spanish idiots here, Thibaud included, don’t know a damn thing about the game.”

“I don’t know,” Jacques said. “My game is really not very good.”

“I’ll teach you everything you need to know, plus a few signals during the bidding.”

“My God, André, these people are filthy rich. They play for a peseta a point. We can’t afford that.”

“Hell, we’ll be playing with their money after the first rubber. We need the money, they don’t. God, I’d like a decent meal. Just to eat meat once more before I die. Come on, let’s take up a collection from the boys so we can have a stake.”

“It’s madness, but you’re the boss.”

The two charming Frenchman then proceeded to fleece the wealthy guests of the Balneario out of enough money for food, half-decent wine, and some clothing for twenty-five comrades at their pension.

Jacques Granville had the additional pleasure of servicing a number of ladies, from chambermaids to some of the wives of the guests.

But, despite Jacques’ urging, André didn’t seem interested in this diversion. He played with one eye on the door, waiting for the haughty Nicole to make an appearance. At first they exchanged a few clipped words, then a softening started in her.

Did she like him or was she merely bored with her parents’ holiday? After all, the hotel was filled with older people. It was not much of a place for a young girl, and there was a romantic air about the ragged Frenchman from the other side of town.