Martin Walker - The Caves of Perigord

“The most useful thing about the Sten is its ease of maintenance. It likes being greased and oiled and taken care of, but it will forgive you if you’re too busy fighting.” He laid the two Sten guns side by side, thumping them clumsily onto the table because of the blindfold. “Right, who has a watch with a secondhand?” Somebody shouted out that he did. “Tell me when to start, and then time me,” he said.

“ Trois-deux-allez-y, ” came the cry. And despite the blindfold, Manners’s hands moved almost too fast to see. One Sten, slip the magazine, release the bolt, withdraw, flick the sear, and release the spring. Lay them down, one by one. The next Sten, the same procedure. “Finished,” he shouted.

“Nine seconds,” came an awed voice.

“Right. Soleil, mix up the parts from the two guns so I don’t know which part comes from which gun.” He heard the clatter, smelled the garlic mixed with Soleil’s cologne.

“Good. Now time me again.” And still blindfolded, he reassembled the two guns. The spring, the sear, the bolt, the magazine. Safety on. Do it again. Lovely old Sten. Doesn’t matter which part comes from which gun, they all fit together just fine. “Finished.”

“Twelve seconds.”

He whipped off the blindfold. “Now, Soleil, which gun is yours and which is mine? You can’t tell. But take one of those two apart and put it back together. We’re not timing now. But Soleil will show you how easy it is. Who’s the youngest here?”

A dozen voices cried that Little Pierrot was the one, just sixteen. He came up and easily put the second gun back together.

“Who’s the oldest?” called Manners, stripping it down again. The elderly lawyer-type who had been speaking to Malrand rose hesitantly. “I have never handled a gun, monsieur, not in my life.”

“All the better-you’ll show them how easy it is.” Most of these men would be accustomed to firearms from childhood, shotguns and rook rifles, military service. The lawyer handled the parts gingerly, had trouble with the spring, but finally handed the reassembled Sten to Manners with a proud glint in his eyes. “Well done, monsieur.”

“Right, how many rounds do you load in the magazine?”

“Thirty,” they all shouted.

“What’s your best range?”

“Five meters.”

“What do you do if it jams?”

“Release the bolt. Bang it on the floor.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Throw it at the Germans.” They all roared, laughing now, delighted with themselves and the gun and with him.

“Enough. We’ll shoot some in the morning.” He turned, clapped Soleil on the back, and headed off to sleep in the barn, the sounds of continued revelry building behind him. He had barely got to the hall when Marat caught him.

“That was a very impressive performance,” he said. “It had to be.”

“Why?” Manners asked bluntly. He was tired and drunk and did not want any more verbal jousting that night.

“It’s what I came here tonight to tell you. Brehmer’s infantry battalions are due to arrive at Limoges tomorrow night. Three battalions of Russian renegades, Vlasov’s men. And one battalion of Georgians, who have been transferred from fighting Tito in Yugoslavia. They are hard and terrible men who know they are lost if Hitler is defeated.”

“What do you mean, Vlasov’s men?”

“He used to be a general in the Red Army, a good one. But when he was captured in one of the big encirclements, he turned his coat and joined the Nazis, and went round the POW camps recruiting more. Most of them probably joined up for the promise of a square meal. They claim to be fighting for a non-Communist Russia, but they’re renegades now. Doomed men. Traitors.”

“Limoges tomorrow night,” mused Manners. “Then they have to move them to Perigueux and Bergerac, get them into barracks, food and sleep. That’s another day. Refit them, issue ammo, re-caliber their guns at the range, and a couple of lectures on tactics, communications, rules of engagement. Russian troops will need German liaison officers, and then some French speakers. The staff work for that will take some sorting out. Another day, and then at least one day familiarization with the country. Right, thanks, Marat. We have four days, minimum. Maybe five. Are they using road transport or local trains to move them to Perigueux?”

“Three local trains have been assigned. They are to be available from dawn, two days from now. But the armored train that escorted them here will stay for that. It’s too risky to ambush an armored train.”

“If we are to try anything at all, we have to hit them before they’re ready. Malrand has more ammo for the Spandau. We’re well off for supplies.” He was thinking aloud. Take the plastic out of the Gammon bombs, and he could probably take out one pillar of a viaduct. No-the armored cars would watch the viaducts and the obvious bridges and cuttings. These men have fought partisans. Maybe this was too big a target. The priority was to have the Maquis trained and ready for the invasion, not to lose their strength and morale fighting superior firepower too soon.

“Perhaps we should duck this one and disperse, start up again elsewhere,” Manners said.

“They’ll torture peasants till they find the arms dumps, round up the parents of the boys who have run to the Maquis. If we leave now without a fight, the people will never trust us again,” said Marat. “I thought you might radio for an air raid on the rail station.”

“Bomber Command doesn’t do that kind of favor. And anyway a night raid would flatten half of Limoges, kill too many civilians. Remember the way the American bombers hit Bergerac when they were trying to get the airfield. No, we’d do better to hit them early, and then disperse. Can your railway men get me to Perigueux and up that track to Limoges tomorrow? And can you get a message to McPhee and his boys to stand by?”

“We can use one of the trolleys if we have to, claim a signal repair. I can reach McPhee.”

“Right, wake me in good time. And send Malrand to me in the barn. We have to talk about this.”

“Malrand will be busy,” he said with a wry grin. “Mercedes came here with me.”

“I thought he hated Communists.”

“She’s a woman, that’s different. And she’s a Spaniard. They love him, Englishman.”

“I thought you said she was with McPhee?”

“She is, when he’s around. But tonight he isn’t, and Mercedes has been at war since Franco launched his coup eight years ago. She lives for the day, and she likes men.”

“I suppose it’s that free love idea that you Communists believe in,” said Manners, suddenly worried by the implications for the mission of a woman coming between McPhee and Francois.

“Mercedes hates fascists because she spent three days being raped by Franco’s Moorish troops when she was barely out of puberty,” said Marat. “She has not had much time for your bourgeois conventions of fidelity ever since. And loving her like my own daughter, I can’t say I blame her. We’ve been fighting a different kind of war for a long time, while your friend McPhee was playing at being a novelist in Paris, and while you were playing polo.”

Time: The Present

Horst pulled a manila file from a fat briefcase that stood by his knee, and tossed it with casual pride onto the table beside the champagne and the roses.

“I am honored to meet you, Major Manners. Your father is the unsung hero of this fruit of my researches. This is the war diary of the Kampfgruppe Brehmer, a specialist anti-Resistance unit, stationed in the Dordogne during April and May of 1944. It comes fresh from the Kriegsarchiv, the German military archives, where it seems I was the first visiting scholar ever to bother to study it. It was filed under the unit records for HeeresgruppeOst, the section that dealt with the Eastern Front, where the Brehmer Division was formed. By chance, I came across a reference to it in the Order of Battle for Army Group G, the command for southern France. So I put in a trace request and the librarians found it for me. And I think it points to the area where our lost cave may be rediscovered.”