The Caves of Périgord (42 page)

“This way,
Capitaine
.” His arm was grabbed and he was pulled off
the road and felt the loom of rock, the movements of other people. “Were you hit?”

“No, no, I’m O.K. Just stunned by a fall.”

Berger and François were suddenly at his side, putting a flask to his mouth. He gagged, the spirit stinging on his torn lip. He tasted blood and brandy, and then the stars seemed to swirl and he blacked out. When he came to, he was sitting on the ground. He pulled himself to his knees. Then, gingerly, he stood up.

“Where are the guns?” he asked.

“Here. We saved two carts,” said François. “Six containers. The lads did well.”

“Here? Right by the road? They’ll be sending patrols any minute.”

“The carts are empty. Little Jeannot has gone for a couple of horses. The containers are under cover. It’s the best we can do.”

“Is anybody at the rendezvous point in case of stragglers?”

“That was Lespinasse. That’s where he found you. He’s gone back.”

“How many of us here?”

“Just six,” said Berger. “Us three, Florien and Pierrot. And Lespinasse, when he gets back. Albert has gone back up to the plateau to look around. Marat was here with Carlos but they thought they’d better try for le Bugue when the mortars hit the truck.”

“Six? We had nearly thirty at the drop zone.”

“Most of them scattered. There wasn’t much of a pursuit after you got the armored car, except for the mortars. Then the cart blew up. Lespinasse said that was your doing.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Wait for Jeannot and the horses, then he and Florien take the empty carts back to the farm at dawn. The rest of us go up this gully and over the ridge toward Rhode. Then we scatter, lie up for the day, and head for Rouffignac. We’ll come back for the containers with a truck when the Germans move on.”

Manners looked around, trying to get a sense of the place. He felt
smooth rock to one side, and open ground on the other. He paced the distance to the road. Five meters to a thin fringe of saplings and bushes. Jesus, this wouldn’t do. He followed the line of the rock, under a steep overhang, and his boot hit one of the containers.

“We can’t leave these here. It’s too near the road. We’d come back to find an ambush or a booby trap.”

“There’s nowhere else, not without transport and we dare not use the road. And we can’t get them up the gully. And besides, the sign makes it so obvious the Germans probably won’t give it a second glance.”

“What bloody sign?”

“La Ferrassie. The big sign for the national monument,” said François. “It’s an old caveman burial site or something. There was a big archaeological dig here, back at the start of the century.”

“I may have something better. Get Lespinasse back here on the double.” Manners considered. Only six men, and each container weighed well over a hundred fifty pounds. Three men to each container. Three trips. It could be done. He went across to the first cart. The long leather straps they used to lift the containers were still there. That made it easier.

It had been the bloody mortars that had done it, the first thing he ever had to thank them for. Plunging down onto the slope to explode in the trees and blast lethal wood and metal splinters everywhere. Except this one had landed at the base of an old tree and blown a crater that sent the tree toppling sideways down the slope, levering out a great chunk of earth with its wrenched roots. It was the tangle of roots that had stopped Manners’s plunge down the slope, and as he tried to get to his feet the earth had given way beneath him and he had slid down farther. That was where he discovered that he had lost his gun, had begun groping with his hands and found the smooth rock on both sides and then curving to meet above his head. The air had been cool and dry, the ground smooth and gently sloping uphill, but almost level underfoot as
he crept in farther, his outstretched hand following the line of the rock. Turning, he looked back to see the slightly fainter darkness of the night through the hole. The roots of the fallen tree made a kind of natural ladder that he was able to scramble up, back to the open air.

He had turned back into the cave, thinking that the tree must have grown at the very entrance, its roots distorted and forced to the downhill side of the slope by the rock. With all its roots on one side, the tree had been too precariously embedded to resist the force of the mortar blast. He went further into the cave, down what seemed to be a tunnel, high enough for him to walk without bending, and not quite two arms-widths wide. The tunnel went for about ten meters, still sloping gently uphill, and then widened again. It was pitch black and utterly quiet. Safe, he had said to himself. Safe. And slumped down to wait the night out.

It was duty that called him back to himself. Or at least that part of it which was composed of guilt. Even as he thought of safety, he thought of his men, wounded and frightened and scurrying through the night with Germans on their heels. His men weren’t safe. And every code he had lived by, every lesson he had learned in eight years as an officer and nearly five years of war, warned that he had no right being safe when his men were in danger and demoralized without him. Alone in the blackness, he confronted himself and rolled to his feet, stretched his hand out to the rock and directed his feet firmly downhill through the tunnel to the tangled roots that made it so easy to climb back into his duty and his war.

“Here’s Lespinasse,” said François, his voice wary and uncertain.

“Right, Lespinasse. Any other men turn up? No? Very well. Take me back to the spot where you first saw me. The exact spot, mind you. And then we creep slowly downhill, looking at every single tree for two knife slashes I made. Understand? François, Berger, you get those containers loaded into a cart. That will make it easier. When we come back, I’ll lead you to the best hiding place in France. Then we go and look for our wounded.”

He followed Lespinasse back down the road, the trudge farther than he had thought. Afraid of speaking, Lespinasse clutched him and pointed to himself and the spot where he had been waiting. Then he led Manners to the place he had first seen him. Manners nodded, stayed on the same southerly side of the road and began walking slowly, scrutinizing each tree. Ten meters, twenty, fifty, a hundred. His eyes were seeing spots with strain when Lespinasse tapped his shoulder. Manners looked back. There were his blazes on the tree. He had missed them. He slapped Lespinasse on the back and told him to stay right there.

Into the trees and up the slope, as straight as he could, trying to remember how far it had been. It would be the very devil to haul those containers up here. But they had men enough and straps, and necessity to spur them. He felt supremely confident that he would find it again, as if repeated bouts of terror at the hands of German mortars was finally being repaid by this one that had resolved to serve his purpose. Again, the fallen tree came to his aid, as he had been sure it would, and he blundered into the thin leaves and branches of its toppled crown. He skirted it, following the trunk until he came to the giant clod of earth and the knotted roots, and there was his hole.

Back down to Lespinasse, telling him to stay exactly there, moving not one inch. He strode with increasing vigor back up the road to la Ferrassie, turned in at the bloody silly sign, and found them loading the fifth container onto the cart. He helped them with the sixth. Six men, it was easy.

“Follow me,” he said. No further explanation seemed necessary. He picked up one of the shafts, put his weight into it, and felt it start to move as the others joined him. “François, get a bough to brake the wheels,” he said over his shoulder, and led them out onto the road, sublimely convinced that there would be no patrols to interrupt them.

It took them until almost dawn, heaving those heavy containers up the hill, the leather straps knifing into their shoulders as their hands
groped for trees and branches and even spiked brambles as they fought to stay upright and maneuver the damn things through the undergrowth. The others cursed and groaned and sobbed with effort but never complained, carried along by the sheer assurance of his will. It seemed an inevitable part of the way his luck had turned that just as they laid the last container beside the tangle of roots, they heard the plod of horses’ hooves and there was Little Jeannot, in perfect time to take the empty cart back to the barn.

He went down first with François. The others took the straps from their aching shoulders and spat on their hands to take the straps in a firm grip and ease the containers down the sloping ramp of earth as if they were so many coffins being lowered gently into a grave. Pierrot and Florien came down to help them haul the containers up the tunnel. As the sky lightened and the first birds began to sing, Manners looked at the last container and stared for the first time at the stenciled markings on its side.

“Load D,” he breathed, as if in the presence of a miracle. Load D, the rarest and most marvelous of gifts. Load D, with its four bazookas and twenty-four rockets for each one. And 154 pounds of plastic explosive, 8 Bren guns, 10,000 rounds of ammo, and 234 field dressings with medical kit. He had six containers, which meant half a load. It was still a miracle. He opened the first container, took out the medical kit, and went off to look for his wounded.

CHAPTER 19
Time: The Present

C
lothilde’s parents lived in what at first seemed to be a small house when they parked by the river and climbed up the narrow street of Limeuil. But the gate opened onto a broad and sunny courtyard where an old man sat reading
Sud-Ouest
and the sound of a radio and clattering pots came from a large kitchen. An elderly but still handsome woman came out beaming and wiping her floury hands on an apron as Clothilde kissed her stepfather. Lydia braced herself for a difficult encounter, but Clothilde had insisted that she come along. “If only to drive the car when I start crying,” Clothilde had said.

“I never knew there was so much money in what you do,” said Clothilde’s mother, when they were settled around the courtyard table with drinks and a plate of olives. “A million francs reward, they said on
the radio, for one of those rock paintings of yours. Some announcement by the President.”

Lydia pulled out the photograph from her bag and showed it to them while Clothilde explained. Then she worked out the currency conversion. A million francs was about $130,000. Heavens!

“I looked up those things you wanted about the Resistance,” said her stepfather. He looked like a scholar, with wispy hair and clear blue eyes that twinkled over his reading glasses. “Not much about caves being used, except for Bara-Bahau and Rouffignac, and you know about them. But there’s a fair bit about these tensions with the Communists.” He opened a fat book at a page he had marked.

“This is Guy Penaud’s
Histoire de la Résistance en Périgord
, and he cites the Armée Secrète report on the Communists’ refusal to join the attack on Bergerac on June seventh: ‘The Communists of Bergerac would not move, and when several days later they were asked to return the weapons entrusted to them, they refused to give them up. I believe this defection was the result of an order from the Party, received at the last minute. The Communists, it cannot be doubted, sought to build an army under their own control …’ Blah-blah-blah … There’s quite a lot like that, of the Communists refusing orders, stealing arms and keeping them for their own purposes,” the old man went on. “There was one called Marat, who was a particular offender, according to the
Armée Secrète
. Your father was attached to one of the units he ran out of Périgueux.”

Clothilde leaned forward at the mention of her father, swallowed hard, and was about to speak when Lydia quickly broke in: “We’re trying to find out what exactly happened to Marat. He seemed to disappear.”

“Fate unknown. Old Lespinasse told me before he died that he’d seen Marat killed somewhere in the confused fighting between Brive and Périgueux. He couldn’t remember where. But there was quite a battle at Terrasson, where the Germans had all the men lined up in the
main square and were going to shoot them. The mayor managed to distract the German commander with a bottle of wine. Sturmbannführer Kreuz, the German’s name was. And it turned out it was his wedding anniversary, so he let the men go to try and put out the fires instead. But in Mussidan, after the Germans fought their way into the town, they just lined up all the men against the walls and shot them down, forty and fifty at a time.”

“The Germans claimed later that they were acting in retaliation for some atrocities against them, but they always said that. They said it about Oradour, after one of the commanders was captured and shot by the Maquis.” He turned to Lydia. “You know about Oradour, mademoiselle?”

“Was that where the SS forced all the women and children into the church and then set fire to it?” Lydia said.

“Yes, Sturmbannführer Otto Dickman’s First Battalion of the Der Führer Panzergrenadier regiment of the SS Das Reich division. They deliberately burned alive over four hundred women and children. When they tried to escape through the vestiary door, the Germans poured in machine gun fire and grenades. I suppose those who died that way were the fortunate ones. June 10, 1944.

“At their trial for war crimes, after the surrender, some of the SS men said they were told that a high German official had been captured and was to be burned at Oradour. Others said they made a mistake, they were supposed to be taking reprisals against another Oradour some distance away, where the Communist FTP had been shooting German prisoners. Others claimed that were angry because they had seen German corpses desecrated. Castrated. They said anything that they thought might save their lives.”

“Could any of it have been true?” asked Clothilde.

Her stepfather shrugged. “It was war, and guerrilla war at that. The SS had no qualms about gunning down women and children, not just in Oradour, but near here, at Carsac, Rouffillac, Gabaudet. No doubt
some of the Maquis were not prepared to take prisoners in such circumstances. And there were some units—like Marat’s Spaniards—that were known for being haters. One of Marat’s men was captured at the ambush of a train, and the Germans fed him into the locomotive’s furnace. They were not inclined to be merciful after that. Old Lespinasse told me that Marat had a reputation for shooting Germans in the stomach and knees, and leaving them to die slowly.”