Jack Ludlow - A Bitter Field

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.