Operation Kingfisher (11 page)

Her comfortable mood was roughly disrupted when Hoffmann said casually, ‘Those casks I saw being delivered. Do they contain wine? I was under the impression that everything you produce came from your own vines.’

Isabelle remembered what the cobbler’s son had said.

‘No, no. They are empty casks. You are quite right. All our wine is grown here. But you have to remember that this vineyard has been going for many years – hundreds of years, in fact. Some of our casks are very old and one or two are beginning to leak. I
heard that one of our neighbours had some casks he no longer wanted, so I bought them to replace the leaky ones.’

Hoffmann seemed satisfied with the explanation, but her father, sitting in his wheelchair at the head of the table, gave a sudden grunt and looked as if he was about to query it. She forestalled him by clearing the plates and setting the last of the previous season’s apples on the table.

But later, when Hoffmann had retired to bed and Schulz was outside smoking, the old man demanded, ‘What was all that about leaking casks? You’ve never mentioned a problem before. Who did you buy them from, anyway?’

She hesitated, then decided there was nothing for it but to lie.

‘They came from the Corbusiers. Apparently the old man bought them some time ago and they’ve never been used. He asked if I wanted them, so I took them to help him out. His vines haven’t done well over the last few seasons.’

‘So what was all that about ours leaking?’

She gritted her teeth. Because her father was immobile and his speech was slurred, it was easy to think that he was not taking everything in, but she knew that in reality very little escaped him.

‘Well, some of them are getting very old,’ she temporized.

He reached out a shaky hand and laid it on her wrist.

‘What are you hiding, Isabelle? What have you got yourself into?’

‘Nothing, papa! We’re just … just storing them for some … some friends. It’s only temporary.’

He gave her a long look, then he turned his head away with a grunt and she knew he had guessed who the ‘friends’ were, and decided it was better not to ask any more questions.

T
he
Madeleine
proceeded on her way without further incident. Luke found that Rollo’s attitude of worldly condescension had been replaced with something which might even be interpreted as respect, and in Christine’s presence he became almost bashful. It dawned on him that Rollo was lonely, trailing up and down the canals with only his father for company, and all his bragging had simply been a ploy to impress someone slightly older and, in his eyes, more sophisticated than himself. Now that a pecking order had been established, he really wanted to be friends. Even Georges Pasquier had mellowed, largely due to Christine’s efforts in the galley. They chugged through peaceful countryside, the hills of the Morvan rising to their right and rich farmland to their left, and the sun shone.

Late that afternoon, they were approaching yet another lock.

‘With any luck,’ Pasquier said, ‘we’ll get through before the keeper goes off duty. Then we can cover another five or six kilometres before we moor up for the night.’

The gates were shut, but a barge had recently passed them in the opposite direction, so they knew the lock must be full. Pasquier sounded his horn as they approached, and the lock-keeper appeared. But instead of opening the gates, he shook his head and pantomimed looking at his watch, implying that they were too late.

Pasquier yelled back, ‘Don’t give me that, you lazy bugger! You’ve got another twenty minutes before you can pack up for the night.’

With bad grace, the keeper opened the gates and the
Madeleine
slipped into the lock. By now well versed in the routine, Luke and Rollo threw lines around the mooring bollards and wound them around the iron bars, which Luke had learned to call ‘bitts’, to hold her steady while it emptied. Rollo greeted the man cheerfully, but he only growled at them and muttered something about hurrying as he headed for the gates astern.

‘Come on,’ Rollo said. ‘We’d better give him a hand to close the gates.’

‘What’s up with him?’ Luke asked. ‘He seems to be in a bad mood.’

‘Probably got a hot date!’ Rollo said, with a characteristic snigger.

As soon as the gates were shut, the keeper hurried to open the sluices ahead of them. Water surged out of the lock and the
Madeleine
began to sink with it. Suddenly there was a shout from somewhere to their right, and an almost simultaneous crackle of rifle fire.

The lock-keeper yelled, ‘Get down! Get down!’ and Luke and Rollo leapt from the quayside onto the descending deck and threw themselves flat.

The rifle fire was answered by the rattle of a machine gun from the opposite side of the canal, and they heard shouts and screams in French and German. Christine appeared white-faced from the cabin, and Luke shouted to her to stay inside, while Pasquier crouched on the floor of the wheelhouse.

The fire-fight went on over their heads for several minutes, then stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Luke raised his head and looked at Rollo.

‘What was all that?’

‘Must be the bloody
Maquis
. Why can’t they leave us alone? I suppose they were planning to blow up the lock but the Germans must have known they were coming somehow.’

‘I wonder what’s happened to the lock-keeper.’

‘Bought it, must have, poor bastard,’ Rollo replied.

Cautiously, Luke got to his feet and grasped the slimy rungs of the ladder on the side of the lock. He climbed slowly, until his head was just above the level of the quay and looked around. To his amazement, the lock-keeper was busy at the wheels which operated the sluices. At his side stood a German officer, laughing and lighting a cigarette.

‘The bastard!’ Rollo had climbed a parallel ladder to take in the scene. ‘Look at him! I bet the
Maquis
warned him what they were planning and he’s betrayed them to the
Boche
. Swine!’

‘What can we do?’ Luke asked.

Pasquier was standing on the deck.

‘Nothing. We mind our own business, that’s what we do.’

‘Well, come on! Let’s get these gates opened, or are you planning to sit there all night?’ the lock-keeper shouted.

Luke and Rollo climbed out onto the quay and went to help him. Looking around, Luke was shaken to see several bodies lying at the edge of a field of maize, a short distance from the bank. Two German soldiers were dragging one of them towards the lock; on the opposite side, more soldiers were dismantling a machine gun.

The German officer strolled along the quay and looked down at the
Madeleine
and Luke froze in terror. In the excitement of the moment, he had forgotten that he had no papers and now there was every likelihood that they would all be asked to produce them.

‘What cargo are you carrying?’ the officer enquired.

‘Stone. For your new airfield outside Auxerre,’ Pasquier replied in surly tones.

‘Ah well, then we had better not detain you,’ the officer said. ‘On your way.’

The gates were open. Luke lowered himself back onto the deck, hardly daring to breathe in case he was called back at the last moment. Rollo followed and the barge glided slowly out into the open water. Nobody spoke until they were well away from the lock. Then Christine came out of the cabin and accosted her brother.

‘What were you thinking of, you idiot, standing up there in full view? You should have been down in the secret cabin.’

‘I know,’ he mumbled. ‘I just forgot for a moment.’

She met his eyes and saw that he was as scared as she had been.

‘Idiot!’ she repeated, and left it at that.

Further on, the scenery changed, with chalk cliffs rising above the canal to the east until they reached the ancient town of Clamecy, with its winding narrow streets. As they passed under a bridge, Christine noticed a statue of an old man in baggy trousers and a peaked cap, carrying a long staff with a hook at the end.

‘Who is that?’ she asked Rollo.

‘Him? He’s a
flotteur
. In the old days, they used to bring logs out of the forests in the Morvan and float them all the way to Paris in huge rafts. They clogged up the canal so that barges couldn’t move, until it was made illegal. Good thing it was!’

From here, the canal snaked around in a huge curve until they passed below the heights of Mailly-le-Château. Now the banks were bordered by vine-covered slopes, until the canal merged with the waters of the River Yonne, whose course it had followed all the way from Sardy. On the morning of the sixth day since they boarded the
Madeleine
, Pasquier said, ‘We’ll be in Auxerre by midday. What are your plans?’

Luke and Christine looked at each other and she felt a sudden hollowness in her chest.

‘I’m not sure,’ Luke responded. ‘We need to find a boat going up the Rhône au Rhin, but I suppose we will have to go to Laroche Migennes before we can do that.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s a pity we can’t use the bikes. But I suppose they have to be handed back to the company that lent them.’

Pasquier shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. They were lent for the purpose of helping people to escape, so they would still be being used for that purpose. But don’t be too hasty to make a decision. Once we’ve delivered this load, we shall have to wait and see if the
Boche
want us to go back for another or if there is anything going
in your direction. If we can get a cargo for Dijon, or somewhere along the Doubs, we might be able to take you further.’

‘Would you do that?’ Christine asked in surprise. ‘It would be wonderful if you could, but we don’t expect you to change your plans to suit us.’

‘Oh, we go where the cargo takes us,’ Pasquier said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a change of scene – and I quite like the idea of keeping my resident cook!’

Christine looked at her brother and felt a small flush of pride, which was rapidly displaced by a nagging anxiety; Pasquier had spoken confidently but she found it hard to believe that he would really go out of his way to help them.

Here, the broad current was busy with river traffic of various sorts. They moored up for lunch within sight of the towers of Auxerre cathedral, and there was a valedictory mood which seemed to have settled on all of them. When the meal was over, the barge chugged on towards Auxerre until, upon rounding a curve in the river, they found that the way ahead was jammed with stationary boats.

Pasquier edged the
Madeleine
up to another barge and shouted across, ‘Hey, Jacques! What’s going on?’

‘Search me,’ was the reply. ‘The
Boche
have closed the canal ahead for some reason. I’ve heard it’s only temporary, but who knows?’

‘I’ll walk up and see if I can find out,’ Rollo offered.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Luke said.

‘You will not!’ Christine and Pasquier spoke simultaneously.

‘Do you want to get us all arrested?’ Pasquier asked. ‘The place will be swarming with Gestapo and
Milice
. You go nosing around and someone is bound to want to see your papers.’

Luke stepped back with a sigh. ‘Damn papers! Why was I such a fool?’

‘I’ll go with Rollo,’ Christine said. ‘I’ve got the right papers, if anyone asks.’

They jumped across to the other barge, and from there to the
bank. Men and women from other boats were already making their way along the towpath towards the city, and they mingled with the crowd.

Finally, they found their way blocked again by a solid wall of backs, while those in front of them craned their necks to see what was going on ahead.

‘Good God! It’s incredible!’

‘What on earth are they playing at?’

‘What fools! Trust the
Boche
!’

Comments like these only served to increase Christine’s frustration. Even standing on tiptoe, she could not see over the heads of those in front of her.

‘Here!’ Rollo grasped her arm, and pulled her to one side where a fence bordered the path. By climbing onto it, they could finally see what was happening and it was easy to understand the incredulity of the people in the crowd. On the side of the river opposite the cathedral there was a slipway, and at that moment a huge, grey-painted vessel was being slowly hauled up it.

‘
Mon Dieu
! It’s some kind of warship!’ Rollo exclaimed.

‘But what are they doing with it?’ Christine asked. ‘Do you think it’s being hauled out for repairs?’

‘They’d take it to a naval base for work like that,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, what’s it doing here? That’s a sea-going vessel. It must have come all the way up the Yonne from the Atlantic. But where are they trying to take it now?’

‘The Saône,’ said a voice from the other side of the fence.

Looking over, Christine saw a boy a few years younger than herself whose face had the satisfied expression of one ‘in the know’ and eager to communicate the information.

‘You’re joking!’ said Rollo.

‘No, I’m not. Everyone round here is talking about it. The
Boche
have been knocking down houses and rebuilding roads for weeks, right the way from here to Avallon and beyond. No one knew why of course, until this lot started arriving.’

‘This lot?’ Rollo queried. ‘You mean there’s more than one?’

‘Oh yes. I’ve seen six and there are still more queuing up in the river.’

‘But why are they hauling them out?’ Christine asked.

‘I can guess the answer to that,’ Rollo responded. ‘They must have thought initially they could take them through the Canal de Bourgogne, but they are far too big. That thing must be sixty metres long at least. It would never fit into the locks on the Bourgogne.’

‘But imagine hauling it across country!’ she said. ‘How on earth do they do it?’

‘They’ve got two huge wheeled bogeys under it. Look, you can see now it’s clear of the water. And there is a tractor lorry pulling it.’

‘Not one lorry,’ the boy said. ‘It takes three of them in line, with four behind to stop it if it runs away on the hills. I’ve watched them going by.’

‘
Mon Dieu
!’ Rollo repeated with a whistle. ‘But I still don’t get it. Why do they want to get them into the Saône?’

‘Because the Saône runs into the Mediterranean,’ Christine said. ‘The Germans obviously wanted to move them from the Atlantic to the Med for some reason, and this must have seemed the best way to do it.’

The huge vessel was now clear of the water and inching its way up the slipway to the road. Rollo jumped down from the fence.

‘It looks as though things might start moving now. We’d better get back.’

Reaching the
Madeleine
, they found Pasquier and Luke waiting impatiently for news. When Rollo told them what they had seen, his father’s face took on an expression of scornful incredulity.

‘Someone’s been pulling your leg. Even the
Boche
wouldn’t be that crazy.’

‘No, it’s true!’ Christine said. ‘We saw the ship with our own eyes. It’s a gunboat of some sort and they are obviously taking it across country somewhere. So I don’t think the boy was lying. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.’

‘And you reckon it’s heading for the Mediterranean?’

‘Where else could it be going?’

‘But why?’ Luke asked.

‘I think I can guess,’ Pasquier said. ‘The Yanks are in control in North Africa now. I reckon the Germans are afraid of an invasion on the south coast. They are reinforcing their defences.’

‘And there are several of these boats being moved?’ Luke said.

‘The boy said he’d seen six himself, and there were others waiting up river,’ Rollo told him.

‘If only the RAF knew what was going on,’ Luke murmured. ‘They’d be sitting targets.’

‘If someone could get a message to London…’ Christine said, and stopped short, looking at her brother.

For a moment, neither of them spoke but both knew what was in the other’s mind.

‘How long will you be in Auxerre?’ Luke asked, turning to Pasquier.

‘Hard to say. A day to unload cargo, then we have to find out where the
Boche
want us to go next. Another day to load. Could be as short as three days, or we could be hanging around here for a week or more. Why?’

‘How long would it take us to cycle back to Corbigny?’