V for Vengeance (16 page)

The coast of England dropped behind until it was only a grey smudge on the horizon and then became lost in the falling twilight. Gradually the stars came out, and a sickle moon came up, intermittently obscured by passing clouds. Hour after hour the launch scurried on, its diesel engine purring rhythmically. There was a great sense of loneliness there, in the little boat out on the dark waters.

For some reason he could not explain Gregory felt depressed. He thought that was due to his having so recently left Erika, yet if all went well he should be back in England quite soon, as he had been furnished with papers, now sewn into the soles of his shoes, which would secure him priority on a plane from Lisbon once he had seen Lacroix. Nothing had been overlooked in their arrangements at either end, as Lacroix could be relied on to handle the French part of the business, and if his man Henri Denoual, did his share, there should be no delay in their reaching Paris.

Even if he did not, Gregory had no doubts at all about his own ability to get there. They might have the bad luck to run into a German coast patrol, but that was unlikely since it was quite impossible for the Germans to keep an adequate watch at night along all the thousands of miles of indented coast
between northern Norway and the Pyrenees. Had any considerable force attempted a landing it would soon have been detected, and in no time German armoured forces could be rushed up to cope with it, but one small boat was a very different matter, particularly as the moon would be well down at the time of their arrival. He had undertaken far more hazardous adventures before and had always felt an exhilarating excitement when about to set out on them; but somehow this time that was altogether lacking, and he had an unpleasant foreboding of which he could not rid himself that trouble lay in front of them.

At eleven o'clock the bulky Cummings came down to say that they had picked up the Brittany coast and were now making their way along it. His navigation proved excellent, as ten minutes later he fetched them from the cabin and pointed to a dark mound ahead, which rose out of the seas, vaguely silhouetted between two others against the lesser blackness of the night sky.

‘There's your island,' he said. ‘I've often sailed these waters in the piping times of peace, and I'd know that mass of rocks between the two headlands anywhere. Nobody seems to be about, thank God, but we'd better lay off for a bit until the tide runs as high as we can get it.'

Farther to the east they could see the beams of the searchlights sweeping the sea outside Saint Malo, and the next twenty minutes proved anxious ones as there was always a possibility that the Germans had mounted searchlights upon the headland of Saint Jacut, which might suddenly blaze out and catch the boat in their beams. If that happened it was a certainty that within a few seconds of their being spotted a coastal battery would begin to roar, and it was ten to one that they would be sunk there in the bay long before they were able to get away out to the open sea.

However, all remained quiet and no lights appeared. At eleven-thirty to the tick the boat was very gently beached on a sandy spit which ran out from the northern end of the island. Having shaken hands with the lieutenant and wished him a safe return, the two friends slipped overboard into the shallow water.

Once ashore they shook as much water off their legs as they
could, then cautiously proceeded inland. Soon they came to great rocky boulders, with smaller slabs between them, over which, suppressing their curses, they slipped and slithered, as they dared not show a torch, and among the piles of big rocks the darkness was absolutely pitch. The tangle of stone sloped gently upwards for about a quarter of a mile, then it became interspersed with patches of rough sandy soil. The stars were now hidden by clouds, so there was no longer sufficient light to keep the great pile of rock in the centre of the island constantly in view. For some minutes they lost their way, curving off to the left-hand side of it; but finding that the ground sloped down again they turned and headed in a new direction. This brought them to still higher ground, and soon afterwards they stumbled into a small cultivated patch.

The clouds parted for a moment and to their relief they could now just make out the ruins of the old castle. It was on the landward side of the biggest mass of rocks, but in the old days the top of its single tower would have given a sentinel an uninterrupted view over the whole bay and far out to sea. To one side of the tower a biggish portion of the ruin had a sloping roof, and this was evidently the part that Henri Denoual had patched up to make a home for himself.

As they moved silently towards it the clouds closed again, but they now caught the faint sounds of music. Approaching a little farther, they paused to listen. Evidently Denoual, or one of his family, was no mean artist, as the music was a violin solo. Going forward again, they moved round a corner of the high stone wall and saw some thin streaks of light showing the position of the door.

The ever-cautious Gregory got out his automatic and turned back the safety-catch; then, with a muttered, ‘Well, here goes!' he knocked.

The violin solo ceased abruptly. There was a shuffling of feet; the door was suddenly flung wide open. The place consisted of a lofty barn, but, temporarily dazzled by the brightness of the light, they could not see any details. Gregory only knew that his dark forebodings had been justified. The room was packed with German soldiers.

The faculty to which Gregory had owed his life on a score of occasions was not physical strength, although his lean body was as tough as whipcord, nor was it any remarkable degree of brain-power, although he was moderately well-equipped in that direction. It was much more his capacity for extraordinarily clear thinking and ability to form instant decisions.

They had walked slap into a trap. Evidently Henri Denoual had been found out by either the Gestapo or the Military Intelligence of the German coastal garrisons. It could not be coincidence that this lonely ruin, which he had converted into a home, was full of enemy troops. The island was a small one, and had there been either gun positions or searchlights mounted upon it the discipline of the German Army was far too good for these men to have left them entirely unmanned or protected by sentries. The night was still, with no sound but a quiet sea murmuring gently on the beaches. Had there been enemy emplacements anywhere among the rocks, he and Kuporovitch could hardly have failed to catch the sound of the voices or footsteps of the men on duty at them. He felt certain that the island was absolutely deserted except for the soldiers in the barn.

Therefore it could not be that Henri Denoual's ruin had simply been taken over, and these troops were employed upon ordinary coast defence duties. It
must
be that the Germans had discovered that the place was being used as a rendezvous for secret agents and had put a squad of men into it to lie doggo there each night and arrest anybody who might arrive to see Denoual.

It followed that it would be quite useless for the midnight visitors to try to pass themselves off as old friends of Denoual's who did not know that he no longer lived there and had come to pay him a casual call, or to pretend that they were amateur fishermen whose boat had struck a rock and sunk in the shallows, casting them upon the island. No story of that kind, however plausible, would secure their release, now that they had blundered into these Germans. They could only be there for the purpose of arresting anyone who came to the place and passing them straight on to the Gestapo.

In less time than it takes to flick on a cigarette lighter Gregory had sized up the situation and faced the fact that their only chance of escape lay in shooting their way out. Kuporovitch was some paces behind him, so there was at least a chance he might get away in the darkness.

With a shout of ‘Run, Stefan, run!' he thrust forward the automatic he had been holding behind his back. As he squeezed the trigger the gun spurted with flame, and the roar of its shots shattered the midnight stillness.

The glare from the open doorway still dazzled Gregory, so he was unable to take deliberate aim. He fired into the centre of the little crowd of grey-green uniformed men who had come hurriedly to their feet as the door was flung open. One man screamed, another fell with a heavy thud; the rest scattered in confusion. But Gregory himself, standing right in the middle of the doorway, was an easy target. Some of the men had already grabbed up their weapons. A pistol cracked, and a bullet flew past his ear. Next second someone hurled a heavy three-legged stool at him. It caught him full in the chest, and he went over backwards, his pistol flying from his hand.

Yelling to his men to follow him, a young
Leutnant
flung himself through the doorway at the fallen Gregory; but Kuporovitch was not the man to leave a comrade in distress. Instead of taking advantage of Gregory's warning shout to run off into the darkness, he had swiftly side-stepped out of the lane of light streaming from the open door and drawn his gun—ready for action.

As the
Leutnant
leapt Kuporovitch fired. His bullet took
the German slap between the eyes, and he was already dead when he fell on top of Gregory. A second man sprang through the doorway, but Kuporovitch got him too with a bullet through the side of the neck, which tore open his jugular vein. Even as he clawed at the wound his life-blood was pouring from it.

The heavy casualties they had suffered in this very first minute of the fracas made the remaining Germans more cautious, and as Gregory struggled out from underneath the dead
Leutnant
he saw that the doorway was now empty. All the others had taken temporary cover behind the thick walls at its sides; but he knew that at any second they might start to fire blind at an oblique angle through it, and he was too old a hand to risk death from a stray bullet. Instead of getting to his feet, he turned over on his tummy and began to wriggle swiftly away. It was just as well that he had adopted these tactics, as he had hardly covered a couple of yards before the barrels of two tommy-guns were thrust out, one from each side of the door. With a hideous clatter they sent streams of bullets in a lateral spray waist-high across the open ground.

Fortunately, Kuporovitch had already gone down on one knee, and the second the guns opened he flung himself flat. He had barely done so when Gregory reached him. Side by side, still on their tummies, they began to wriggle backwards away from the open door as quickly as they could. They had covered some thirty yards when a head appeared round one side of the door brightly silhouetted against the light, Kuporovitch paused for a moment, rested his elbow on the ground, took careful aim, and fired. There was a loud clang as his bullet struck the German's tin hat, and the head was instantly withdrawn.

The Russian cursed softly, but Gregory whispered: ‘Don't grumble! you've done damn' well so far. I thought my number was up just before you killed that
Leutnant.
Even one on the battle bowler will be enough to make that fellow keep his head in for a bit and gives us more time to get away.'

As he was speaking they had resumed their backward progress, and soon afterwards they were sufficiently far out of the line of the door to get to their feet and run for it. Instinctively they headed seaward, and a few minutes later
pulled up, stumbling and panting, among the tangle of big boulders which fringed the sandy beach.

Immediately after landing them the launch had turned and headed straight out to sea on its way back to England. It had taken them a good quarter of an hour to find the ruined castle and another five or six minutes had elapsed since. In that time the powerful engines of the launch would have carried it seven or eight miles upon its homeward journey, and it must have already been too far out when the shooting started for Lieutenant Cummings and his men to have heard the sound of the shots; so both the fugitives realised that there was no hope at all of escape that way.

‘We'll have to swim for it,' muttered Gregory. ‘That's our only chance, but the mainland can't be much more than a mile distant.'

‘You're right,' Kuporovitch grunted. ‘Go ahead, my friend, and good luck to you. Unfortunately, I can't swim, but I'll cover your retreat and kill a few more of these lice before they get me.'

‘If you can't swim we're staying here,' said Gregory firmly. ‘I'm not going to leave you to be butchered.'

‘No, no!' the Russian protested. ‘What is the sense of our both being killed or captured? Besides, it's much more important that you should get away than myself. It is you that Lacroix wishes to see in Paris, not me, and great things may hang upon your meeting.'

‘Maybe they do,' Gregory's voice was surly. ‘All the same, I'm not going without you. But listen! I'm a pretty strong swimmer. If you lie flat on your back and keep dead still I reckon I could get you across. How about it?'

Kuporovitch shook his head. ‘No, my friend. If the channel were only a few hundred feet that might be possible, but it is a mile or more. I weigh sixteen stone, and we should be as hopeless as new-born children if we landed naked on the other side, so there is also the weight of our clothes, weapons and ammunition. You could not possibly tow such a weight all that distance.'

Gregory knew that his friend was right. The effect would be too much for him and one or both of them would drown half-way across.

‘All right, then,' he said, ‘We'll stay here. If you remember, Lacroix told you that the sea runs right out, and that people can walk dryshod from this island to the mainland when the water's low. With luck we may be able to hide among the rocks until the tide goes out.'

True. So there's still a good chance that I shall be able to evade capture. That's all the more reason you should make certain of your escape by swimming the channel now. Gregory, I beg of you to do so. Somehow or other I will manage to join you later on.'

That's no good. We should never find each other. But as it was high tide at eleven-thirty the tide will be full out by half past five. It will still be dark, as dawn is not till six-thirty, and the moon's already well down on the horizon. We'll stick it out together, Stefan, and slip away as soon as the water's fallen far enough for us to wade across. We should be able to make a start round about half past four.'