Operation Kingfisher (22 page)

Cyrano shook his head. ‘No, Madame. Thank you for the invitation, but I have to get on.’ He turned to Christine and took her hand. ‘Are you quite clear about everything?’

She nodded, her throat suddenly tight.

‘Good luck, then. I’m sure we’ll be meeting again very soon. Goodbye, Madame. Thank you for your help. France will be grateful.’

With a smile and a squeeze of her hand, he was gone, and she found herself abruptly cut off from everything that had become familiar over the last weeks. It was much harder than she had imagined it would be.

Jeanette led her up to the private apartments on the top floor and opened a door.

‘This is your room. I wasn’t sure if you would have all your own things, so I’ve laid out a nightdress and there are some undies in the drawer. The bathroom is next door and I’ve put a toothbrush and some soap on the shelf. Is there anything else you need?’

Christine hesitated. It was almost a month since she had left home and there was one necessity that was becoming ever more pressing.

‘Some S.T.s,’ she mumbled.

‘Oh, that’s no problem. I’ve got some in my room. I’ll fetch them.’

Left alone, Christine looked round the room. It was prettily decorated, with floral wallpaper and a patchwork quilt in pastel colours, and there was a vase of fresh flowers on the dressing table. She glanced into the bathroom; a large fluffy towel was hanging on the rail.

She felt a lump in her throat. Until now she had not been homesick. Life on the boat and in the camp had been so different that home had seemed to belong to another life. Now, she was vividly reminded of her own room, with its familiar comforts, and her mother’s voice calling her to come and eat.

She washed her hands and splashed her face with cold water and by the time Jeanette returned, she had recovered herself.

In the Bois de Montsauche, the
Maquis Xavier
was continuing its reorganisation. With the arrival of enemy troops in the area, security had become a priority. Xavier set up guard posts at the beginning of all the tracks leading up to the camp, which were manned night and day on a regular rota. Gregoire showed them how to set up trip wires on the narrower paths, attached to small explosive charges which would go off and alert them to the presence of intruders; but these had to be abandoned after a few days since they were regularly set off by the wild animals that inhabited the forest. After the whole camp had been jolted awake and leapt to arms in the middle of the night two or three times, it was decided that the explosives should only be connected up if there was an imminent threat of attack.

Training continued, with the help of the two regular officers and the acquisition of more heavy weapons, partly from another
parachutage
and partly as a result of an ambush on the road to Château-Chinon. Luke found himself learning to use both a Bren gun and the German Schmeisser.

Gregoire’s main objective was still the sabotage of German
lines of communication and to this end, he selected a small group for more intensive training in the use of explosives and Luke was delighted to be one of those chosen. Their first objective was the railway between Decize and Auxerre at Tamnay, where the line branched towards Château-Chinon. They set out late one afternoon, intending to reach their target around midnight. There were seven of them, in two vehicles; Jean-Claude’s butcher’s van and a pick-up truck with a Bren gun mounted in the back. Luke, to his great pleasure, was put in charge of the Bren. They took the minor road through Ouroux and on towards Montigny.

Coming to the edge of the forest they were brought up short by a barricade of tree-trunks across the road. Luke swung the Bren round to cover it, while rifle barrels appeared from the car windows; but to their relief a voice hailed them in French.

‘
Qui-vive
?’

‘
Maquis
!’ Gregoire shouted back, and half a dozen friendly faces appeared over the barrier. They had run into the edge of territory controlled by a new group; this was the
Maquis Socrate
and they were soon introduced to its leader, a good-looking young man who was delighted to make the acquaintance of the ‘famous’ Gregoire.

‘Not too famous, I hope,’ Gregoire murmured.

Bottles of wine appeared from somewhere, and they all drank to victory and ‘death to the
Boche
’, and then the barrier was dismantled and they were on their way again.

The next hazard was the level crossing, where the line to Château-Chinon crossed the road just outside Chougny. It was dark by this time and the barriers were down. There were lights showing through the cracks in the blinds at the window of the crossing-keeper’s house, but there was no way of knowing what the man’s attitude would be to two vehicles breaking the curfew for no good reason. It was possible also, that he was not alone. The Germans had conscripted a number of men known as
Gardesvoies
, whose job it was to patrol the lines watching for signs of sabotage. It was likely that they had no more sympathy with the
Nazis than the
Maquis
, but threatened with draconian punishment if anything went wrong on their stretch of line they could not be relied upon to co-operate. There might even be German guards manning the crossing, and with the van packed with explosives they could not afford to be stopped and searched.

Alphonse, one of the older men, got out of the truck and went to knock on the door. They heard him call, ‘O
uvrez la barrière, s’il vous plaît
.’

There was a tense pause, then the door opened and Luke heard a low-voiced exchange between the two men. Finally, the heavy wooden barrier creaked up. Gregoire let in the clutch and Alphonse jumped aboard as they bumped across the lines, with the van close behind.

They stopped eventually just outside Tamnay and gathered around Gregoire for a final briefing.

‘I will take Jean-Claude and Pierre with me. Our target will be the engine turntable just outside the station. Alphonse, you and François deal with the points where the lines diverge. Luke and Raoul, I want you to work your way down the line a hundred yards or so towards Decize. Alphonse and I will set our time pencils for a one-hour delay but I want you Luke, to fit yours with pressel switches. Once the damage has been done to the points, the first thing to come down the line will be an engine pulling trucks carrying repair equipment. Your charges will take care of that and make it even longer before the track can be made usable again. Understood?’ There was a murmur of agreement. ‘OK. Rendezvous back here at 01.00 hours.’

Luke collected what he needed from the van and he and Raoul loaded it into rucksacks and set off along the tracks. Raoul was one of the recent recruits, who had been co-opted on to the explosives team because he had been apprenticed to an electrician and pronounced himself adept at all kinds of wiring jobs. This was his first operation and Luke noticed that as they walked, he was glancing apprehensively around him. Twice he stopped abruptly and whispered ‘What was that?’

Luke, listening, could hear nothing but the normal night-time sounds, but his companion’s behaviour worried him. It was plain that he was extremely frightened. Luke considered his own emotions; he was excited, keyed-up to a point of extreme tension, but he was not scared. There seemed to be nothing to be afraid of at that moment.

As soon as they were clear of the station, Raoul said, ‘This will do, won’t it?’

Luke looked around. There seemed to be no reason to go further. He lowered his rucksack.

‘OK. You start on that side. I’ll do this.’

He began to unpack his gear, then stopped and looked up. Raoul was standing stock still, as if paralysed by fear.

Luke said, ‘Come on, Raoul! The quicker we work, the sooner we can get out of here.’

The other man cast frantic glances to one side and then the other.

‘It’s my guts!’ he whispered. ‘I can’t … I need…. Sorry!’ And with that, he made a dive for the side of the track, slithered down the embankment and disappeared among some bushes.

Luke stayed completely still for several minutes, listening for any sound that might suggest that Raoul’s hasty departure had raised the alarm, but the night remained quiet. It was clear that Raoul had no intention of reappearing, so Luke set to work grimly. He had twice as much to do now, and enough time had been wasted. It crossed his mind that Raoul might be a traitor who had deliberately infiltrated the group, and might even now be alerting the local
Milice
to what was going on; but he had no grounds for assuming that, so he told himself that the sooner he got the job done, the less chance there was of being apprehended.

He crouched beside the track, withdrew a lump of
plastique
from his rucksack and began to wedge it between the sleeper ties and the rail. Once this was complete, he took out a fog signal and attached it to the rail. This was a small explosive charge which would be detonated by the wheels of the engine. Its original
purpose was to warn drivers that there was some hazard ahead, but in this case it would be linked to a length of Cordtex, which would set off the larger explosive charge under the rails. He had almost completed the work when he heard the faint crunch of approaching footsteps.

‘Raoul?’ he called softly.

There was no response and the footsteps came closer. Luke jumped to his feet and grabbed his rifle.

‘Who’s there. Stop, or I fire!’

The steps halted and a voice from the darkness said, ‘Take it easy. I’m on your side. I don’t mean any harm.’

‘Come here, where I can see you.’ Luke’s hands were shaking and he hoped that his voice did not betray his fear.

The newcomer walked forward and in the light of his torch, which lay on the rails where he had been working, Luke made out a solidly built figure wearing the armband of the
Gardes-voies
.

Luke said, ‘There’s nothing for you to do here. Push off, before you get your head blown off. My colleague will have you covered.’

There was a soft chuckle. ‘No he won’t. I heard him crashing down the embankment and when I last saw him he was skedaddling back towards the town as fast as his legs would carry him. That’s what alerted me to your presence. Look, I meant it when I said I’m on your side.’

‘Oh yes? That’s why you’re wearing that armband, I suppose.’

‘This? You don’t think I’d really work for those bastards, do you? I’m a railwayman. I work in the marshalling yard at Decize. I belong to the union and we are all one hundred per cent behind the Resistance. We’ve no quarrel with you fellows blowing holes in the tracks, we just don’t fancy going up with them. So we patrol the tracks to keep an eye on what you are up to. Forewarned is forearmed. Right?’

‘I see your point,’ Luke said dubiously. ‘OK. You’ve seen what I’m doing. Now you can make yourself scarce.’

The stranger looked down at the track.

‘Fog signals, eh? So you are not just aiming to blow up the
track. Has it occurred to you that the first train through here in the morning will be packed with civilians going to work?’

‘No, it won’t,’ Luke said. ‘It’ll be a repair train going to make good the damage further up.’

The man glanced over his shoulder. ‘Ah. So you’re not working alone. Now I get the picture. A repair train? OK, fair enough. But you do realize that you’re not laying that in the best place?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re not local, are you?’

‘No.’

‘I thought not. If you were, you’d know that about 200 yards further on the railway crosses the River Trait. Set your charges there and with any luck the engine and the trucks it is pulling will end up in the river. Have you got any more of that stuff?’

Raoul’s discarded rucksack lay where he had dropped it. ‘Yes,’ Luke said.

‘Come on then. I’ll show you.’

The man picked up the rucksack and started down the track with it. Luke followed, his rifle at the ready. It was possible he was being led into an ambush, but his instinct told him otherwise. He remembered that some of the other
Maquisards
had told him that the railwaymen were supporters who could be relied on. After a short distance, the embankment fell away and he realized that they were on a bridge with the river below them. His companion walked to the middle of the bridge and stopped.

‘Here should do nicely. You get busy. I’ll keep watch.’

Luke looked around him. The rails gleamed faintly in the moonlight along the length of the bridge. There was nowhere to hide there and to either side there was only the void. It was a very unlikely place for an ambush. He took the rucksack from the other man and crouched down to insert the plastic explosive. His hands were cold and still shaking slightly and it seemed to take a long time to connect up the charge and the detonator. In the middle of doing it a sudden thought caused him to freeze.

‘What?’ the railwayman asked.

‘I’ve just thought. The driver of the repair train will be a Frenchman, won’t he? And his fireman?’

‘I wondered if you’d thought about that.’ A pause, then in a softer tone. ‘Don’t you worry about that, lad. I told you why I’m doing this job. I know all the drivers back at the depot. I’ll find out who is going to drive the repair train and warn him. He and his mate can bail out over there, before the start of the bridge, and the engine will keep going under its own steam. You won’t have them on your conscience.’

Luke looked up at him gratefully. ‘Thanks. I’m glad you came along.’ He finished connecting the charge and stood up. His watch told him that he had twenty minutes to get back to the rendezvous. ‘I’d better get going.’

‘Me, too.’ The man stuck out his hand. ‘
Bonne chance, mon ami!
’

‘Good luck to you, too,’ Luke replied. He shouldered the two now empty rucksacks and turned to walk away. After a few paces, he looked back. It was still possible that the stranger was only waiting for him to leave before dismantling his work; or that he intended to head straight for the nearest phone to alert the authorities. But he was striding away along the track, in no apparent hurry. Luke calculated mentally; in less than an hour, the time pencils attached to the other charges would go off. So even if the man intended to betray the whereabouts of the one on the bridge, there was no chance that the others would be found before they exploded. He could only hurry back and hope that everything would go according to plan.