A Bitter Field

CHAPTER FOUR

A period of silence followed while both mulled over the significance of that discovery, not least in the fact of how they had come to the attention of what was in essence a private army. Cal knew the name well, Peter Lanchester only vaguely from the not-very-comprehensive reports in the British press, but he was well aware of the fact that France, in this fractious decade, was no different to his home country when it came to political disruption.

Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts were only the most visible of those who demanded radical change in Britain; there were outfits even more extreme while France was awash with organisations like the Jeunesses Patriotes, Action Francaise and Solidarite Francaise or Les Camelots du Roi.

These groups ran through the gamut of right-wing monarchists all the way to the outright fascist, but they did have certain things in common. They were all aggressively anti-Semitic, anti-socialist gangs of thugs, the main difference between them being in the level of violence they employed.

When it came to causing mayhem, the hot-blooded French left the British fascists looking placid; indeed they would stand comparison with the Nazis when it came to challenging socialists, communists and Jews on the streets and taking on the government. Street battles were endemic and collectively they had sought to storm and torch their own parliament in Paris two years previously, which led to them being outlawed.

All it meant, in truth, was they went underground until the smoke cleared. Then they could come to the surface again and operate more or less openly in a country where the state authorities, the police and internal security outfits were more likely to have some sympathy for their aims than any great desire to forcibly curtail them.

That would be particularly true in an isolated city like La Rochelle, which, judging by the obvious wealth of the conurbation, was probably a bastion of right-wing conservatism, where oversight by the law had to be minimal given the Jeunesses Patriotes felt safe to the point of openly answering the headquarters phone with their name.

Regardless of their chosen designation the French right had one other thing in common: all the groups were solidly anti the Spanish republicans, whom they saw as bedfellows of the greater enemy, the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union, and would act as unpaid spies when it came to stopping any weapons getting into anti-Franco hands.

The Jeunesses Patriotes were an ultra-violent paramilitary group modelled on Mussolini’s Fascist Youth or the Spanish Falangists. It was made up of university students and the sons and daughters of the rich and a higher bourgeoisie determined to protect their privileged existence and their money.

They espoused in particular a virulent hatred of communists, despised socialists, reviled Jews, and they were as an organisation known to be prepared to kill, their activities formed and funded by the champagne millionaire Pierre Taittinger and like-minded industrialists.

‘Who did you tell where you were headed, Peter?’ Cal asked finally, picking at his food.

‘Only the people who needed to know.’

‘From where did you tell them?’

‘The Paris embassy.’

‘In code?’

‘Of course.’

‘Which means you used the Cipher Room?’ Peter nodded, making the connection immediately: the clerk who coded his message would have to know the contents prior to encryption. ‘You’re sure those two chaps you brought from the Paris embassy were ignorant about my cargo?’

‘I can’t be certain, Cal, but there was nothing in the message I sent to alert them to the truth, nor in their behaviour when in my company. You were not referred to by name and nor were any details of your shipment. I merely informed those I had to that I was pursuing my assignment to La Rochelle. How the hell that got passed on to a French fascist party I cannot tell.’

‘I don’t think these young sods are following me, Peter, I think they are following you and that information could only have come from London.’

‘Unlikely,’ Peter insisted, without hesitation.

‘You seem very assured and I’m not confident you can be, given our previous conversation.’

‘I have good reason to be, Cal, but why is not something I am yet prepared to discuss with you.’

‘Indulge me. Air the thought.’

‘There’s no point. Besides, if someone in London blew the gaff, and I fail to see how they could, they would surely tell their French equivalents in the Deuxieme Bureau and that would have meant either of the scenarios we discussed before this wonderful repas.’

‘Meaning I would not have got this far?’

‘Exactly, you’d be sitting in choky thinking about rubber truncheons. And I might add, given we are where we are, in the middle of bloody France and these chaps pose what seems to be an unquantifiable threat, is there any point right now in speculation about what got you pegged?’

‘There is, Peter, plus a scenario that’s even more troubling. Someone knows and has let slip to the wrong people that there is a cargo of very high-quality weapons on the way to Spain-’

Peter cut across him. ‘Which the Jeunesses Patriotes will be determined to stop.’

‘Maybe yes, maybe no. We’ve got two proper Charlies on our tail who don’t seem to care about being spotted, but it’s bloody obvious what they are after. When they make a phone call it’s not to the gendarmes, it is to the headquarters of their organisation, which just happens to hate the present centre-left French Government and would love to bring it down — something they cannot do peacefully.’

‘I’m not following you, old boy.’

‘What if the Jeunesses Patriotes are not trying to stop the weapons from getting to Spain, but are trying to steal them for their own use here in France?’

‘When did that notion occur to you?’

‘Between making that call and coming back here.’

‘Don’t you think you are jumping a bit too far along the old conspiracy trail?’

‘It’s possible, Peter, but you think it through and come up with another answer that makes sense. We’ve got both the weapons and ammunition to equip a substantial force and what appears to be a couple of young thugs who are part of a group of mad bastards trying to get their mitts on them.’

‘Hand them in,’ Peter conjectured, ‘feather in the old cap, sort of thing?’

‘These kids and their backers don’t want to impress the Government, Peter, they want to kick it out and very likely line the ministers up against a wall and shoot them.’

‘It might be wise to recall that they are only kids, Cal.’

‘They’re old enough to kill and have shown more than once they are capable of doing so.’

‘Street battles, heat-of-the-moment stuff.’

‘Say I’m right and they do want to steal that cargo. What happens to the likes of you and me, what happens to the people waiting to help me if they do? If they are not planning to hand in the guns they are not planning to hand us over to the authorities either.’

‘Say you’re barmy?’

‘Is it worth the risk?’

‘No,’ Peter replied, standing up, ‘and I hope while you were doing all that thinking you came up with a way to put the mockers on the blighters.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To buy those fags you forgot to get me, which will also, as I enter the shop with the telephone, make our chums wonder what we are up to, given I should think one of them is watching us.’

Cal nodded, but made no attempt to ascertain if there was any truth in what had been said.

‘I expect, by the time I get back, that you will have formulated a way out of this mess that does not risk me getting shot at again. Why is it every time I get involved with you I seem to be at some risk of an early grave?’

‘You don’t have to be part of it.’

‘If you are right, Cal, and I am still to be convinced that you are, then it’s too late for that. How soon do you have to get that cargo moving if it is to go out tonight?’

‘Quickly; it will take at least eight hours to get to the canal basin, then right through to the port and clear customs in a way that does not arouse suspicion.’

‘Do you have to lead our Johnnies to them?’

‘No, Peter, I have to lead them to a place where they can be dealt with and I also have to get a barge moving without anyone working out what it’s carrying. So go and get your fags while I pay our host.’

Cal checked his watch as they pulled out of the square heading back to the bridge, waving away the excessively pungent smoke of the cigar-thick French cigarette Peter had just lit up.

‘I am going to presume they don’t know where the cargo is; for instance, like you, they have no idea it’s on a barge. If they did, why tail us, given there is only one way out to sea?’

‘And in order to tell their mates they have located them they need a telephone, which means they must come back here, since we doubt there’s one closer that they know about.’

‘Their chums can’t move to intercept until they know where to go. So maybe we should lead them to that farmhouse and set a trap.’

‘Which neither you nor I would walk into, Cal.’

‘But then we would not have been spotted if we wanted to tail anyone, would we?’

‘Are they stupid or just cocky?’

‘Bit of both and certainly the latter, I’d say. I don’t recall ever meeting a French uber — patriot but they are of a type, no different to their German counterparts, full of themselves and sure that God, ideology and history are on their side.’

As if to prove what he had just said the Hispano-Suiza appeared once more in the rear-view mirror, a fact that Cal passed on. The situation was the same, driving without haste, except this time as they crossed to the southern side of the bridge he stopped and waited, seemingly indecisive, looking left and right, his tail pulling up likewise before his wheels hit the crossing.

‘Seven minutes,’ Cal added, looking at his watch again. ‘Say ten minutes to get to that phone, make the call and drive back to the bridge. He’s bound to drive like a bat out of hell.’

Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out a penknife, looking very smug indeed as he opened the blade. ‘Except, when he gets there he will find the instrument does not work.’

‘You cut the connection?’

‘No point in just being a passenger, old boy, and I reckoned you had paid the old biddy who owns the shop more than enough to cover the repair.’

Cal nodded and moved off, driving straight into the jumble of barns to pull up beside the two lorries, slightly annoyed as they got out that two of the men who had agreed to aid him came out of the largest barn to greet them and thus made their presence known.

It would have been pointless to chastise them even if he had the power, so he just smiled and raised his hand in welcome, while telling them to get ready to move; he planned to be well away from here when the roadster came back.

The roar of that car’s twin exhausts alerted them to the fact that any previous calculations, such as sending the lorries in different directions, were useless. The Hispano-Suiza swept over the bridge, turned right and, with the driver’s foot right to the floor, shot off down the road to La Rochelle.

‘One assumes,’ Peter said, with his usual studied calm, ‘that the chums are already on their way and our Johnnies have gone to meet them and chivvy them along. We have been humbugged, old boy.’

Cal’s response was not calm, it was a loud and foul expletive followed by a stream of rapid French as he informed those he had brought with him — another quartet had emerged to make six in all — about the danger they were in, that followed by a set of rapid instructions.

The most important were to despatch the two Basques to tell the owner of the barge, who had stayed aboard to guard it, to get it moving towards the port and an insistence all three ignore anything else that happened around them.

He was still talking as he dashed to the nearest lorry to open the passenger door, reaching under the seats to pull out a roll of sacking, which, when rolled open on the ground, revealed the matt black metal and wooden stock of one of his Czech ZB26 light machine guns, complete with spare barrel and the front bipod, which he began to assemble and load, before dragging out and opening a canvas backpack to reveal several box magazines.

‘Peter,’ Cal said, removing and handing over his jacket, ‘take my car back over the bridge. Get it out of sight, then cross back over and keep an eye on the road from La Rochelle. Oh, and you might need that spare clip for the Mauser.’

His old army comrade was looking at the machine gun and he was clearly worried. ‘You can’t start a war, Cal.’

‘I’ll try not to, Peter, but these sods have to be stopped and I don’t think blowing kisses at them will do the trick. Now please do as I ask and quickly, we don’t know how long we have and I need to think of a way to throw them off their game.’

With no idea of numbers or the level of the arms they might be carrying, Cal knew one very pertinent fact: with lorries likely to be against cars he could not outrun them, which would mean whatever he did, flight would only bring on a contest and in the open country, where he would be at an even greater disadvantage than he was at present.

So he had to think of a way to stop them getting into these farm buildings, a place he could easily be driven out of unless he was prepared to use the machine gun, and that might bring about, depending on how aggressive those heading this way were and regardless of his own disinclination, the need to kill.

Given no alternative that is what he would have to do, but quite apart from the bloodshed there was a second consideration in terms of the discreet smuggling out of a barge-load of weapons. It would hardly help to have the whole region, and probably the town and port as well, crawling with gendarmes after a gun battle and several fatalities.

He was also responsible for those Frenchmen, dock workers who had come along to help their fellow anti-fascists in Spain. They might be committed enough to run the risk of arrest but they were not armed, only along to provide the muscle he needed to load the weapons on to the ship, and now a quartet were looking at him waiting to be told what to do and right at that moment he was struggling for a solution.

It was the recollection of the lorry he had passed on the way here as well as how difficult the squeeze had been that gave him the idea, but just blocking the route would not be enough and he cast around for an added factor, looking at all the old bits of farm equipment until his eyes lit on a large drum surmounted by a lever pump.

The commands might have been rapid but the obedience was frustratingly slow from men who were willing helpers but not fighters. Cal was obliged to not only repeat his wishes but to cajole and push them into compliance before he could get the lorry started and back it up so the drum could be loaded on the back.

While they were doing that he went to find something easily combustible once soaked with petrol, alighting on a bale of straw, and then he had to get them to understand his aim, which took a quantity of arm waving until the nods looked convincing and he could get back behind the wheel and start the engine.

With the loaded light machine gun and spare mags on the seat beside him he eased the lorry out over the rough ground, which risked that drum being tipped off over the dropped wooden tailgate, obvious by the shouting telling him to slow down as it bucked and swayed over the deep dried-out ruts that criss-crossed the yard.

That ceased as they made the smooth surface of the pave road, where he could also jam down on the accelerator, not that it produced much in the way of pace in a vehicle old and fatally underpowered.

It was just as well he had no need to go far; Cal wanted those thugs who were on their way to keep looking at what lay behind the lorry, to be able to easily see what he intended they should: the second one making a getaway.

On a long straight road and in his slightly elevated position he saw the first of a long convoy of some ten cars coming in good time, the J12 in front, not racing but at a steady pace that was somehow more threatening than all-out speed.

As the gap between them closed, he could plainly see that each vehicle looked to be full of young men in dark-blue belted raincoats and berets, an alarming choice of uniform on such a warm day; they had no fear of being seen for what they were.

Those with open tops, which now, at the front, included that Hispano-Suiza, were crowded with individuals who were making no attempt to hide their weapons either, and while it was hard to tell at a distance of what they consisted, Cal suspected they would be a combination of pistols, hunting rifles and shotguns, hopefully more of the latter given their poor range.

Sure he had come as far as he needed he eased on the brakes and turned the wheel first left, then right, so the lorry slewed across the road, coming to rest at an angle and completely blocking it, the front bumper resting against a canal-side tree, the tailgate hanging over the ditch, an act that halted the approaching convoy.

Then, grabbing the machine gun and backpack he jumped down and called to his Frenchmen to do likewise and run for it, with instructions to get aboard the second lorry and wait, he following at a walk, his nose twitching at the overpowering smell, holding the light machine gun by its carrying handle.

Peter had recrossed the bridge and was coming to join him, the Mauser in his hand, while to his right the sound of chugging told him his barge was moving towards the port, puffs of smoke coming from the stack, the man on the wheel looking straight ahead, smoking pipe in his mouth. Never speedy, he hoped to get it past the lorry before he had to act, just as he hoped those young thugs would see it as just another barge on a well-used commercial waterway and not guess what it was carrying.

‘They should stop and have a gander,’ he said, once Peter had joined him. ‘Then, if they are still up for it, come forward on foot, thinking we are using the lorry as cover, by which time the barge should be well on its way.’

‘Are they armed?’

‘Heavily and openly.’

The answer made Peter glum. ‘So they show no fear of the authorities, then?’

‘Apparently not.’

It seemed pointless to add it was still lunchtime in rural France, so the chance of a passing gendarme was zero. Besides, if this crew were so open in their weapon-carrying, it had to be because they felt utterly safe from interference by the forces of the law, evidenced by their openness in identifying themselves on the phone, and it could be worse — Cal felt they had to work on the assumption of official collusion, not indifference.

‘There’s no cavalry coming over the hill, Peter, we are on our own, and before you ask me how far I am prepared to go, let me remind you they are likely to be killers.’

‘I got that impression myself, Cal,’ Peter replied, hauling on the Mauser to cock it with a loud click. ‘But then, old chum, so are we if forced into it.’