V for Vengeance (51 page)

In the morning they ate some of their iron rations, then set off again. On entering a pleasant village Madeleine recognised it as Marly, so was able to confirm that they were on the right road. Later they hoped to get a lift on a lorry, but Gregory did not wish to invite awkward questions until they were farther from Paris. With a few minutes' halt every hour and a long rest at noon they walked for the best part of the day, except for a stretch of about three miles over which a countryman with a pony and trap had spontaneously given them a lift. By evening they had accomplished a further nineteen miles and were approaching the outskirts of Mantes.

After selecting a small coppice as their headquarters Gregory left the other two to rest, and went on into the town; his object was to find a carter who might be leaving the following day in the direction of Rouen. He spent the best part of two hours visiting several cheap bars and eating-houses, where he got into casual conversation with a number of workmen.

Madeleine and Stefan had long since eaten their supper and were getting a little anxious about him when at length he
rejoined them about ten o'clock. He reported that he had had the luck to find a lorry-driver who was actually leaving for Rouen the following morning, and for a price that had been agreed he had been willing to take them with him.

After sleeping in the open again they were up very early next morning and walked through the town while it was still shrouded in the misty light of the summer dawn. Half a mile beyond it they waited on the crest of a hill with some anxiety to see if their man would, after all, arrive to pick them up. A quarter of an hour later he appeared. The lorry pulled up, and Gregory went forward to greet him.

The man was a dark, sinewy-looking little Basque whose name was Sabarros. Later they learned that he had been a soldier in the Maginot Line at the time of the collapse, but had managed to borrow a suit of civilian clothes and so escape capture and internment. Gregory paid over half the money that had been agreed on; then he and his friends settled themselves on the hard boards of the lorry among some great wicker-covered carboys containing acid, which screened them from view. It was hard going for them, and before the day was out they were wretchedly sore from the bumping they received. When the lorry made one of its periodical halts late in the afternoon Sabarros came round to tell them that they must get out as they were only a mile from Rouen, and he did not mean to risk taking them right into the city.

Having paid him the rest of his money they took a fork road. Some way along it they found a disused chalk quarry at the bottom of which some bushes were growing. Leaving the other two to scramble down into it, Gregory cut across the fields towards Rouen. During their long walk on the previous day they had passed quite a number of German troops, but nothing like so many as there were here. The old town absolutely swarmed with them, but none of them took any notice of Gregory as he wound his way in and out of narrow turnings down to the docks.

It was June 17th, exactly a year to the day since the collapse of France, and on every hand there was ample evidence of the damage which the British bombers had done throughout the year to this important invasion base. There were so many wrecked buildings on the waterfront that the Germans no
longer troubled to try to conceal them; but in spite of the havoc, the port itself was still functioning, and there was a considerable amount of shipping there.

After looking in vain for the
Sans Souci
and her tow of barges Gregory got into conversation with several watermen until he learned that she had arrived on the 15th and left on the 16th.

He was not unduly disappointed as he had hardly expected to be lucky enough to catch her there. By a quick reckoning he worked out that as she had taken seven days to cover the hundred and sixty odd miles of water between Paris and Rouen she would be at least three days in covering the remaining eighty miles of water from Rouen to Havre. As against that his own party had succeeded in making the eighty-mile journey overland from Paris to Rouen in two days and a night; so, given equal luck, they should be able to get overland to Le Havre in thirty-six hours. As the
Sans Souci
had left on the 16th she was not due at Le Havre until the 19th, so they had, on his reckoning, at least a day to spare.

When he had worked this out to his satisfaction he began a discreet enquiry in the hope of finding another lorry-driver who would take them on to Le Havre the following morning; but there he met with much more difficulty than he had expected. All French territory between Rouen and the coast was now in the special zone occupied by the German armies which sooner or later might yet receive orders to invade England. With their usual thoroughness the Germans were leaving nothing undone to keep their preparations secret.

In consequence, there were special road patrols and innumerable barriers at cross-roads, at which all civilian transport was halted and examined. All the lorry-men he could contact told him that it was more than lives were worth to attempt to smuggle three people through, none of whom had passes. Late that night he returned to the chalk quarry, and as gently as he could broke the disquieting news to the others that they would have to make the rest of the journey on foot, and that it was now going to be a race against time as to whether they could reach Le Havre before the
Sans Souci
left it.

Early next morning they were on their way, and night found
them at the little town of Caudebec after a most exhausting day. They had accomplished twenty miles of their journey, but in the late afternoon they had come into the area that was forbidden to all civilians without passes; so for the last two hours of daylight they constantly had to get off the road and take lonely by-paths, or hide in the woods when they saw German patrols approaching in the distance. To add to their distress, as twilight fell it had begun to rain, and they passed a most uncomfortable night in a small coppice.

Next morning they made another few miles, but they had to hide so frequently that they decided that it would be better to rest during the day and go on at night.

Night travel also proved to have its disadvantages. The moon was now ten days past full and only a waning sickle in a sky of scudding clouds. Bright moonlight would have added to their dangers, as sentries would have been able to take potshots at them from some considerable distance with a good chance of bringing one of them down; but in the darkness they had to face the peril of running into troops without warning, and three times during the night they had to take to their heels at a sudden challenge.

It was the night of the 19th, and the day that the
Sans Souci
could be expected to reach Havre; yet they had covered only another ten miles when from sheer fatigue they were compelled to camp again near Lillebonne. They still had the best part of twenty miles to go, and if the
Sans Souci
had arrived at Havre on the previous day she might sail with the tide in the morning.

Gregory tried to cheer the others by saying that the
Sans Souci
might easily take four days between Rouen and Le Havre. Three and a half was the absolute minimum, so the probability was that she would not arrive till the 20th and sail again on the 21st, but he knew that their chances of catching her were now decreasing with every hour, and in this troop-infested country they dared not go on in daylight.

As darkness fell on the night of the 20th they started off once more, determined to make the most desperate effort to reach Le Havre before the morning. The hours of darkness proved a veritable nightmare. Again and again they had to turn back or get off the road at the sound of movement in
front. On five occasions they were challenged, and on three they were fired at. The two men helped Madeleine as much as they could, but when dawn came all three were desperately weary. By their unshakable determination they had succeeded in covering fifteen miles during the night, but they had only reached Harfleur, which lay the best part of five miles outside Le Havre.

On the flat uplands there was little cover, but they managed to find another chalk-pit which had a small cave in it. Kuporovitch's haul of iron rations had served them splendidly, but they were now nearly exhausted, and to recruit their strength the little party ate the last of them before stretching themselves out to sleep.

Being old campaigners, Gregory and Stefan had both developed the capacity for waking at a given time. Before they settled down they agreed that they would only sleep till midday, as it seemed now that their last chance of catching the
Sans Souci
, even if she were still at Le Havre, would be a cross-country dash in full daylight, so that they could reach the harbour before the evening tide.

Shortly after midday they climbed out of the chalk-pit and set off across the fields. They could now see the city spread out below them, and the English channel, beyond which lay safety and freedom, calm and peaceful in the summer sunshine. To their great relief they found the last part of their journey much less hazardous than they had expected. There were not so many German troops about as there had been farther inland, and apparently the local inhabitants were allowed to roam about freely within a few miles of the city, so that the little party was not particularly conspicuous, owing to the numerous men and women working in the fields. At a little after two o'clock they entered the town and made their way down to the port.

It had been blitzed by the R.A.F. to an even greater extent than had Rouen, and here again the damage was so extensive that the Germans were making no attempt to conceal it. For a quarter of an hour they walked along the quays, their eyes frantically searching the shipping for the
Sans Souci
and her tow.

Suddenly Gregory raised his arm and pointed. He could
have cried aloud with joy. The
Sans Souci
had not yet sailed, and was lying at the end of a long jetty. She was too far off for him to read her name, but he knew her at once from the fact that the third in her string of barges was considerably smaller than the other four.

The next thing was to be aboard her, but, as they had feared, they found the entrance to the jetty guarded. Two stolid-faced Germans, one with a rifle and fixed bayonet, the other with a tommy-gun, stood there.

Gregory took his party into a waterside café, and at once began to make discreet enquiries as to when the
Sans Souci
was due to sail. There were no German soldiers in the place, only French wharf-hands, so they answered his questions without any hesitation and seemed willing enough to help him in any way they could. None of them could give him the information he required, but one of them went out to make enquiries, and came back to report that she would sail about half an hour after midnight. Gregory then asked how he could best get aboard her. The men shook their heads glumly, and all agreed that there was no chance of that unless he could get a special pass.

He enquired if there were any way of contacting the tug's captain or one of the members of her crew, but again the men shook their heads. No one was allowed on to such tugs, and no one was allowed off them. That was one of the German regulations, and they were extremely strict about enforcing it. The
Sans Souci
had put into Le Havre in order to pick up her escort, as she would be proceeding in convoy up the coast with a number of other vessels. She had arrived two days before and was there still only because the convoy had not yet been made up, but none of her crew had been allowed ashore, even to buy a drink.

A square-shouldered man, who seemed somewhat better educated that the rest, had proved most helpful, so Gregory took him outside and asked him if he could suggest any method by which three people could be smuggled on board the
Sans Souci
that night. The man said that, if they were prepared to risk being shot at, it might be accomplished after dark with the aid of a small boat. He even went so far as to say that he had a boat and would have taken on the job himself
but for the fact that his niece was getting married from his house that evening, so he could not possibly let down his family and the friends who had been invited by disappearing for an hour or two in the middle of the party.

Gregory suggested that if he could be shown where the boat lay he and his friends would take it out on their own, and, as they would have to abandon it if they were successful in reaching the
Sans Souci
, he was perfectly willing to buy the boat outright. He further pressed his argument by stressing the fact that if they could do as he suggested his new friend would run no personal risk at all.

After a little discussion the waterman, whose name was Boucheron, agreed and led Gregory about a quarter of a mile along the quay to the place where his rowing boat was tied up. They did not approach it, but Gregory took careful note of its situation and that of the German sentries nearest to it. Then Boucheron asked: ‘What do you intend to do with yourself in the meantime?'

Gregory looked at his watch. It was only just on half-past three, so he and his friends had the best part of nine hours to fill in, and he replied with a shrug: ‘Goodness knows! Just hang about until it's close on time for her to sail, I suppose.'

‘Then why don't you and your friends come along to my place?' suggested Boucheron. ‘It'll be rough-and-ready, mind, but we've managed to collect a bit of food and a few bottles of wine for the occasion. This damn' war's grim enough, and one must try to forget it sometimes. Anyhow, I didn't see why my little niece should be robbed of her fun on the day of her marriage.'

‘That's awfully kind of you,' Gregory replied. ‘There's nothing we should like better. But before accepting it's only fair to warn you that we're on the run.'

‘That didn't take much guessing,' Boucheron smiled. ‘I tumbled to that the moment that you spoke of trying to get aboard the
Sans Souci
without a pass. I don't want to know your business—it's enough for me that you're up against these German brigands; but we won't tell the wife anything about it, in case she gets a bit nervous. I'll just say that I used to know you when I was working in the shipyards at Brest and that I asked you and your friends to come along.'