The Caves of Périgord (49 page)

“You want to come to Tulle?” asked Marat, amused. Manners put his hand on the gear lever to stop it moving, and urgently made his case. Tulle might stop the armored column heading its way. There was nothing to slow the one coming through Brive. Except Marat the ruthless and his Spanish haters.

“The English gentleman wants me to hang some German prisoners at the side of the road and slice their balls off for their friends to find them?” said Marat levelly. “It sounds as if you have learned something about war, here in France.”

“I leave the details to you. The only way to slow the Germans now is to get them so furious they start burning and killing here.”

“So in the absence of English guns, we have to slow them with French blood.”

Manners said nothing. He had nothing more to say. He began to climb out of the car and look for François. Then he heard a car door slam behind him as Marat emerged, and saw the Communist’s spectacles glint as he walked to the back of the truck where his men sat, armed to the teeth.

“I want some German prisoners and some rope,” he rapped. “And a blunt knife. From now on, we’re fighting this war Spanish style.”

There was a truck parked at la Ferrassie when the fast black Citroën that François had commandeered drew to a halt on the road from le Bugue. In the headlamps, it was empty and deserted.

“Ours?” inquired François, as Lespinasse cocked his Sten gun. Manners shook his head as he saw “Madrid” scrawled on the tailgate. “Marat’s Spaniards.”

The three of them toiled up the hill to the cave, guided by the sound of work and curses, and found Marat and McPhee standing by the uprooted tree while one man labored to widen the hole and more were at work inside.

“How thoughtful of you to bring an electric torch,” said Marat amiably. “Our hurricane lamp ran out of paraffin.” He raised his voice. “Igor?
Gdye ty?”

“Vot ya, tovarishch,”
came the reply from the Russian behind them. He must have been watching them from the moment their car drew up and followed them up the hill. Manners recalled the Schmeisser.

A head emerged from behind the uprooted tree. It was Florien, one of the lads who had helped them put the bazookas into the cave. He must have guided Marat here. Manners sighed inwardly at the complications of French politics.

“We have come to take the bazookas to Terrasson,” said Manners.
“It’s a joint action of the
Armée Secrète
and your FTP comrades to try and hold the road to Périgueux. We might as well go together.”

“I regret that my orders do not mention Terrasson,” said Marat. “I am not throwing away my men’s lives on foolish gestures against tanks.”

“And no doubt your orders tell you to keep the bazookas as souvenirs,” mocked François. “They’ll come in useful after the war.”

“Hey, calm down,” said McPhee. “We’re taking them to Périgueux, to blast our way into the Gestapo building in the Credit Lyonnais, and some others to hit the Hôtel Normandie at Bergerac. It’s my idea, the only artillery we’ve got to take out their HQs. The battle of the Das Reich division is over, you guys. We lost it. They roll on. We stay, and take out the garrisons they leave behind.”

“That is not what the joint command has agreed,” said François calmly. “Those orders bind you as well as me, McPhee.”

“Orders have to change when the situation changes. That’s what we’re trained for. To use our initiative,” said McPhee.

“This is getting us nowhere,” said Manners equably. “Let’s be sensible-about this. You say you need a bazooka to hit German headquarters. Fine. Take two, and half the rockets. And let us have the other two for Terrasson.”

A long pause.

“Sounds good to me,” said McPhee.

Malrand shrugged. Marat nodded and waved his Russian across to join them. Igor shouldered his Schmeisser and headed down into the cave.

“And you won’t believe what’s in there,” said McPhee, turning to follow him. “Not guns, I’m talking about. It’s an art gallery down there.”

François fired his Sten, two short bursts, one that toppled the Russian into the pit and the other that cut down Marat. Lespinasse, not needing an order, fired a long burst into the jumble behind the tree roots, and stunned with shock, Manners saw the American crumple. Then François tossed a grenade.

Manners dove to the ground at his side, expecting the grenade to ignite the rockets, or more gunfire from the Spaniards in the cave. There was no cover. He hugged the ground, his hands over his head and the grenade went off with a muffled crump. Then silence. One more short burst from a Sten. Then silence.

“You weren’t much use,” said François.

Manners rolled over and looked at him. He was standing over the body of Marat, his gun still aimed down. Lespinasse changed magazines.

“You’re insane,” Manners said, and scrambled to his feet to look for McPhee. His torch still glowed on the ground. He picked it up and looked at the carnage. Marat was dead, the back of his head shot away. That must have been the last burst he heard.

McPhee and the Russian were tangled in the tree roots, both dead. And below them was a mass of tree limbs, shredded by the grenade. Manners plodded dully across to McPhee’s body, his mind a jumble of horror at an accident and suspicion of deliberate murder, at the hatreds of French politics, and the Spanish girl and human jealousy. The American lay on his back, his head drooping into the hole that led to the cave. Blood had spread across his face and over his shaved scalp. Sickened, he turned to François, his voice thick and tired, but he had to ask. “Was this politics or Mercedes?”

“Don’t be a fool. This had nothing to do with women. Lespinasse, help the
capitaine
clear that mess away,” said François, as calmly as if he were ordering dinner. “We need those bazookas.”

Manners hauled McPhee’s body clear of the tree limbs. The burst had caught him across the top of his chest and throat and the American’s head dangled. The Russian had been shot in the back, and Lespinasse helped pull him aside. François took the torch, and shone it down into the cave mouth. Lespinasse hauled on an arm, and it was Florien. Manners helped pull the body clear.

“Our little traitor,” said François.

The two Spaniards beneath Florien were jammed in the cave entrance. Lespinasse went down but couldn’t tug them free.

“Try pushing them down into the cave,” said François.

His back against the big taproot of the tree, Lespinasse began pushing with his feet, grunting with effort. Manners coughed with the stink of cordite, and then turned aside and retched. Down in the cave something gave, and Lespinasse called something cheerful as the tangle cleared. He crawled into the passage, and then shouted back, “It’s O.K. There’s room to stand here.”

“Let’s get our rockets,” said François. Manners just looked at him, still incapable of speech.

“I’m sorry about McPhee,” said François, as he clambered down into the cave. Then he stopped and added, “He just got caught in Lespinasse’s burst. It was an accident of war, Jacques. I liked McPhee, you know that.”

Wearily, Manners picked his way down the tree roots and into the passage he remembered. Lespinasse was dragging the dead Spaniards into the big cave, and François’s torch picked out the parachute containers, the latches still open as Manners had left them. Then the torch lifted at something on the wall, and François said, “What the devil …?”

It was a bear on the passage wall, a big and prowling black bear. The torch moved on to a brown horse with a black mane, one of its legs disappearing into a fresh bullet scar on the rock. Manners moved forward to look more closely and something crunched heavily beneath his feet. It was a slab of rock, sliced off the wall. He kicked it out of the way, nearly losing his balance as his feet slid on wet blood.

François had gone on into the main cave, and the torch picked out a big stag, its antlers down, and its feet churning up turf as it pawed the ground ready to charge. A doe with an arrow in her throat stood beside it, and below that, a pathetic fawn collapsed on its rump, with the silhouettes of two human figures behind. One was drawing a bow. The other, female, crouched, holding a spear.

“Another Lascaux,” said François, and turned the torch to the far wall. “This is better than Rouffignac, better than Font-de-Gaume. It’s better than anything I have ever seen.”

A great landscape unfolded before them in the dimness of the torch. It was recognizably this same countryside of Périgord, the smooth, curving rock of the cliffs, that swirl of river and line of trees, that wide evening sky with the pinks of sunset, but a landscape that teemed with long-gone life. A bear was emerging from a cave, a great bull with flaring horns stood beside his cow, and a herd of short and sturdy horses, almost like Shetland ponies, were moving to drink.

“It’s marvelous,” breathed Manners, lost in the painting. The gunfight might never have been. This was another world, an innocence, and a lost perfection. To think that this had been waiting on the walls around him when he first stumbled upon this hiding place for his weapons.

“I do not believe this,” said François, as he moved the torch yet again, and a huge face leaped at him from the rock. A handsome youth, half-smiling and with lively eyes, a slim face and firm jaw and long, curling hair. Then the woman appeared, lovely in that combination of shyness and assurance that had first attracted Manners to Sybille. He thought, I could fall in love with her. I have already.

“Our ancestors,” said François.
“Les premiers Français.”

“You could be right, sir. He looks a bit like you,” said Lespinasse. So he did, that sharp intelligence with the fine features and slightly dreamy eyes.

“Right,” snapped François, bringing them back to reality, and suddenly Manners could smell again the cordite and the blood in the air. The spell had broken. “Let’s get the guns out.”

He and François linked their belts together to haul the containers along the passageway. François climbed up, propping the torch in the tree roots, and with Manners and Lespinasse heaving and François hauling, they managed to wrestle them up and out, to roll onto the wide stretch of grass.

“You two stay down,” said François. “And I’ll push the bodies down to you, one by one. We’ll have to leave them in the cave. If the Communists and Spaniards didn’t kill us in retaliation, the Americans would.” Manners felt almost grateful to him, for putting the nightmares of retribution into words.

Little Florien, the Russian, Marat, and finally McPhee, flopping down headfirst. Lespinasse took the shoulders and Manners took the feet, and half dragged them down along the passageway and laid them, side by side, in the center of that splendid tomb that had already disappeared again into darkness. As they crawled back out, Lespinasse in the lead, Manners knocked into the slab of rock he had pushed aside earlier, and in the torch glow, he saw the shape of a bull on the whiteness of the chalk. He picked it up to study it more closely, and found it not as heavy as he had thought. It seemed the natural thing to take it with him.

François had rigged the small charges of plastique while they were laying out the bodies. One beside the tree root, another in the rocks on the shelf above. That seemed oddly fitting. The place had been opened by a German mortar. British explosives could seal it again. They manhandled the containers down to the road and into the truck. Then they went back for their guns, and to light the fuses. After the explosions, they checked that the place was sealed. And then they went back down through the trees, Manners slithering clumsily with his rock in his hand. Lespinasse and François took the Citroën, and Manners drove the truck. In Le Bugue, he stopped in the square where the old men played
boules,
and let himself in the back gate into Sybille’s yard. The place was dark, the door locked, and her bicycle was gone. He slipped his slab of rock behind the rabbit hutch and left. Then he climbed into the truck and drove woodenly on toward Terrasson and a last, despairing effort to stop an armored division, his mind locked in an ancient landscape and his heart yearning simultaneously for Sybille and for a girl who had been dead for thousands of years.

CHAPTER 22
Time: The Present

E
verything about Malrand’s house was the same, except that Lespinasse was waiting for them inside, looking grim and formidable-beside the big fireplace, and there had been different security men outside. The big security man nodded cool recognition at Manners as Malrand came forward to kiss Clothilde and Lydia, and shake Manners’s hand.

“There is champagne, of course, but I need something stiffer,” said the President. He was dressed in stout shoes and old corduroys and a worn leather jacket, and they made him look his age. “Major, perhaps you’ll join me in a scotch?”

“I hear from Lespinasse that you came close to your goal when you were stumbling round la Ferrassie,” Malrand went on. “There is a lost
cave, of course, where your father’s painting came from, and I suppose it’s time for the secret to come out. And time for the dead to be properly buried. I’m far too old to campaign for this job again, and I’d rather the truth came out than find your British government dropping all sorts of ponderous hints about unfortunate repercussions.”