Tramp in Armour (42 page)

'This I could really do something with, Barnes. I haven't
had my hands on such a hoard since I joined the RAF. If I'd
bumped into this outfit instead of your own mob I could really
have earned my daily bread. And say, look you here...'

Barnes wasn't too interested in Colburn's enthusiasms and the Canadian's burst of energy seemed to underline his own
state of desperate fatigue to an extent which made him feel
more irritable than ever.~ He spoke quickly.

'I'm off with Jacques now. Reynolds is staying with Bert next door so you'll have someone to chat to.'

Tm quite happy here. You're going to Jacques' father's
place?,'

'I doubt if we'll get that far.'

'The old boy might know what's what. And watch yourself
- we don't want any nasty accidents now we're at the end of the line.'

'That's right. So for Pete's sake, Colburn, don't drop one of those detonators.'

Barnes checked his watch, Penn's watch. 2.25
am.
Ninety
minutes to dawn. The recce was. completed and they were
almost home, if you could call 'home' three outbuildings they had never known before, one of them stuffed with high-ex
plosive. He looked back along the silent street and saw Jacques
a long way behind him - Jacques who was still a problem
because the village of Lemont was abandoned, all the inhabi
tants either evacuated or driven away by the Germans when
the tide of war had rolled this way. The lad waved a hand and pointed ahead, an unnecessary precaution because Barnes was
already trying to locate the German sentry they had skirted on their way in. He had been standing on guard outside a small
single-storey house where light had shown round the edges of
drawn blinds. On the outskirts of Lemont all the houses were
single storey and this was the only house which had shown any
sign of life in the deserted tree-lined street. Who was hidden
behind those drawn blinds? And where was that damned
sentry now? .The empty motor-cycle and side-car was still
parked in front of the house.

He took several cautious steps forward again and halted. He
could still see the light round the blinds but the sentry had
vanished. It worried Barnes and he glanced back again to make
sure that the lad was still behind him. Jacques opened his
hands to express puzzlement and Barnes knew that he also had
spotted the sentry's absence. The only thing to do was to go
round the back way as they had before, but cautiously. He held
up a warning hand to indicate to Jacques that he should stay
well back and then he crept forward, turning down a path
which led between the houses.

His nerves were keyed up tautly, his mind oscillating between two impulses - the need for caution on the last lap
and the need to move quickly because they were running out
of time just when he had found his supreme objective. The
path was bordered with shoulder-high stone walls and he knew
that when the path turned at the bottom the walls continued
along the backs of the houses. Keeping his head down, his
revolver in bis hand, he crept past a closed gate let into the
wall. He was concentrating on placing his feet carefully
because he remembered that there was a deep ditch on the
left. Perhaps he heard something at the last moment. He might
even have started to turn his head, but he could never remem
ber the details afterwards. A rifle butt struck his head with
such vicious force that he lost consciousness immediately...

When he woke up he knew that he was going to be sick, but
he forced it down into the churning pit of his stomach. His
wound ached abominably but now the pounding hammer was
at work inside his head, and because it felt hollow he seemed
to receive each blow twice as the blows echoed. Get a grip on yourself, man. With an immense effort he forced open eyelids
which felt to be made of lead. A blinding light hit him, so he closed them quickly. A voice spoke gutturally. In English.

'So pleased you are recovering, Sergeant Barnes.'

Barnes jerked his eyes open a fraction and peered through slitted lids. From behind the lamp a uniformed arm appeared and lowered the light cone so that it shone on to the desk. The
arm belonged to a thin-faced man of about thirty who wore the
uniform of a German officer. Glancing round the darkened
room Barnes could see no sign of Jacques; the French lad must
have escaped into the village during the ambush.

'Tell me when you are ready to speak,' the German sug
gested.

Barnes swore inwardly. He was seated in a high-backed
wooden chair and his wrists were bound with wire to the arms.
When he tried to shift his body surreptitiously he felt a broad
band strapped round his waist; only his legs were still free.
They had sewed him up nicely. Another uniformed officer appeared from behind his chair and like his colleague behind
the desk he was wearing bis peaked cap. He spread pine
needles along the desk under the cone of light, arranging them
carefully in varying lengths, apparently taking no notice of
Barnes while he completed his little display. Barnes gritted his
teeth, wondering whether the prelude to torture was a bluff to
sap his nerves. The officer behind the desk spoke.

'I am Major Berg. You, of course, are Sergeant Barnes.' He lifted a British Army pay-book off the desk and waved it. 'And if you are wondering why I speak such good English it is since
I was military attache in London before the war.' His voice
changed and he spoke rapidly, his manner bleak. 'Barnes,
where is your unit and from where will the British be attacking
us in the rear?'

Barnes said it. Name, rank, serial number. Then he shut his
mouth. He opened it a moment later when the officer who had
been bending over the desk swung the stiffened side of his
hand savagely across Barnes' lips. He felt something give in
side his mouth, felt around with his tongue, tasted blood, and
spat out a broken tooth. Through half-closed eyes he saw Berg
shake his head as though cautioning his fellow officer.

'I should have introduced you,' Berg went on. 'This is Cap
tain Dahlheim. Normally our method is to ask questions
politely first and then exert pressure later, but we are short of
hours. I should warn you that Captain Dahlheim becomes
annoyed when people do not answer my questions properly.'

Barnes said it again. Name, rank, serial number, adding that
under the Geneva Convention this was all the information he
was obliged to give. Dahlheim was fiddling with the pine
needles now and while his body temporarily masked him from
Berg, Barnes lifted his wrists hard against the wire. It was
quite impossible to get his hands loose.

'But you are a spy,' went on the unseen Berg. 'Show
him the
clothes he was wearing when we found him.'

Dahlheim picked up a bundle from a chair and showed the
clothes. For a horrible moment Barnes wondered whether they
belonged to Jacques but he saw that they were a jacket and a pair of trousers of blue denim, common apparel for French
workers in the fields. Jacques had worn a lounge suit. He must
have escaped.

'I've never worn those in my life and you know it.

'Captain Dahlheim can confirm that we took those clothes
off you while you were still unconscious. We can say you wore
them to hide your uniform. And you had no means of identification. No pay-book.' He dropped the pay-book into a drawer
and closed it. 'So you are a spy and can be treated in any way we like.'

Was Berg bluffing? Barnes could see his white face now and
as he became accustomed to the single desk light he thought
the German was older than he had thought at first. He felt sick
with fury. He had been on the last lap, had completed the most
difficult reconnaissance he had ever undertaken, had been with
in a five-minute walk of Bert's refuge, and because of a
momentary lack of alertness he had been captured. And as the
realization dawned on him, the realization of how unlikely it
was that he would ever escape, he found one thought torturing
his mind. He had come to Lemont because the battle plan they
had taken from the German staff car showed beyond doubt
that here was the point of maximum peril for the BEF. And
now he believed that he had found a way of striking a blow
against the 14th Panzer Division, the spearhead of the attack
on Dunkirk, only to find himself a prisoner. What was it
Berg was saying?

'We have not a great deal of time, Sergeant Barnes.'

'None of us have that here.'

'For various reasons it is a matter of urgency that you
answer my questions quickly. Where is your unit? What is the
British plan?' He paused. 'Dahlheim! Barnes is not going to reply again.'

Dahlheim straightened up and turned round. The needles
were arranged in a neat row, their sharp points turned towards
Barnes under the cone of light. Beneath the peaked cap
Dahlheim's face was round, his eyes seeming half asleep, and for the first time Barnes saw that he wore a black and silver
collar-patch bearing a curious runic sign. Captain Dahlheim
was a member of the SS.

By now Barnes found that his eyes were growing accustomed to the semi-darkness beyond the cone of light and be
hind the seated Berg he could see a window. The curtain was
drawn across it but at one side there was a gap, and because of
the deep shadow beyond the desk light he could see a wedge of
moonlit night. Dahlheim was reaching his hand to his side and
Barnes expected him to draw the pistol from his leather hip
holster, but instead he took a length of cord from his pocket
and wrapped it round both hands, He took his time over this
little exercise, watching Barnes carefully, then without speak
ing he went past the chair and disappeared behind it. Guessing what was coming, Barnes tensed himself.

Reynolds could see the sentry standing outside the small house and he also saw the stationary motor-cycle and "sid
e-car close
by. It was the first sign of life he had seen since entering the
village. He took several quiet paces away from the road down
a pathway between stone walls. Now he was well under cover,
two houses away from where the sentry mounted guard. For a
minute he stood there, undecided what to do. It was probably the first time in his Army career that he had performed these two actions and both of them worried him - he had disobeyed
an order and he had taken an initiative without reference to
any superior. He kept wondering whether he ought not to go
back.

Barnes had specifically told him to stay with the tank and
now Bert was a good five minutes' walk away. Only an over
whelming feeling that something had happened to Barnes had
prompted his action and he had firmly refused Colburn's offer
to come instead. A pilot's place was in the air - they weren't
much good on the ground, Reynolds had reasoned to himself.
Now his great dread was that he had missed Barnes and
Jacques coming back and that already his sergeant was asking
Colburn where the devil Reynolds was. He'd better go back, he decided, but not along the road - that was far too danger
ous. There must be another way back along the rear of these
houses. Yes, he'd go back immediately. Barnes was able to
look after himself.