John Robb - I Shall Avenge!

Twelve minutes to eight…

God, no! It was eleven minutes to eight. The clock hand had just moved.

Legionnaire Kriso Tovak made a wild calculation. He established that he had about six hundred seconds to live. A cigarette would last longer than that. So, if a man were to light a cigarette now—at this very moment—it would still be burning when he, Tovak, was dead.

Tovak whimpered. He pressed his terrified face still harder against the bars of his cell window. And he continued to stare at the big clock that brooded over the opposite side of the barracks.

Then he remembered that the clock always struck the hour. Just one reluctant, mournful stroke. Clong … Like that. Men new to Dini Sadazi often waited for it to go on chiming. But it never did. It was too old and it did not care. It had been there since the barracks were built and it had looked down on too much suffering.

So now that clock seemed to say: “There—another hour has gone. But if you want to know which hour, you must look at me. I can’t be bothered to talk…”

Would the firing squad take their time from that clock? Would the officer wait for it to strike before lowering his naked sword? And would he, the infamous Legionnaire Tovak, hear its grudging voice just once more before the Lebel slugs ripped life out of his quivering flesh?

Perhaps he would. The court martial sentence had been clear enough. The president had read it with the deliberate delicacy of a man savouring memorable prose.

“…At eight o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, June 19th, Legionnaire Tovak was to be shot until he was dead, in accordance with the provisions of the French Articles of War… his body was to be buried in the military cemetery at Sadazi… his personal possessions were to be sent to his next of kin…”

Personal possessions! Tovak with personal possessions! It was absurd. Unless, of course, it was considered that a letter from Prague, eleven sous, two cigarette stubs and a photograph were worth bothering about. The letter, money and the stubs had been taken from him. But he had been allowed to keep the photograph.

Perhaps he had better look at it again. Just one last look.

He drew away from the window and the bars left deep imprints on his thin face, as though he had been branded. Tovak rubbed it with a twitching hand, then groped in his tunic breast pocket for the piece of pasteboard.

He could not hold it still. He had to lay it on the wood wall bunk. Then, to get a closer view, he knelt on the stone floor beside it.

Annice…

She was worth dying for. But it would be better to have lived.

Tovak’s mind swirled backwards through time…

Back to the days when he and Annice had married in Prague. It was shortly before the hell of war had swept over Europe. They had been happy. Perhaps too happy. He had been a clerk in the offices of one of the city’s many furniture firms. She—an expert in foreign languages—had been a translator for a shipping concern. And they had lived in respectable semi-comfort in a flat over a tobacco shop.

Until the jackboots arrived. Until the Teutonic tongue was suddenly to be heard everywhere in their ancient and lovely capital.

For a time, they had tried to carry on as usual. Tried to believe that the Germans would be driven away without any direct help from such humble people as Annice and Kriso Tovak.

But it was Annice who said in their flat one night: “I’ve joined the Resistance.”

As simply as that.

He had been shocked, frightened. He had heard of the Resistance. Heard, too, of what the Nazis did when they captured members of it. He tried to argue with her. It was no use. Annice would never be turned from any purpose. And, he admitted, she was stronger and braver than he.

But he had joined, too.

He had been little more than a messenger.

But Annice had become an expert in explosives and sabotage. In such work a woman was less likely to be suspected than a man. And the cold indifference with which she could destroy life had sometimes horrified Kriso Tovak. Annice could hate as completely as she could love.

Ah yes, he had been in constant apprehension during those months.

It was not only for himself, but for Annice as well. The idea of the delicate and beautiful Annice falling into the hands of the Gestapo.

Then it had happened.

A party of black-uniformed men had called at their flat and taken her away. He had tried to stop them. He had thrown himself at them. But they had knocked him down and kicked him until he was unconscious. When he recovered, he was alone in the flat.

But not for long.

Later, they had called for him. And they had sent him to Poland to sweat with forced labour gangs in the dry, brittle glare of the salt mines.

Somehow, he had survived. It was the will to see Annice again that kept him alive. He had never believed that she had been killed,

Never believed it until, the war over, he had returned to Prague. And there, after months of frantic enquiring, he found that Annice had been sent to a concentration camp. And, although no precise records had been found, it was almost certain she had been murdered.

So there it was.

Amid the debris of war, Tovak was alone. Annice was gone. His job was gone. And he did not want to stay in Prague. It held too many memories of her. Memories that were now a torture.

For two years he took any odd work that came his way. But always he was looking for a chance to get out of Prague. It was by chance that he heard some men talking about the Legion in a café. And he remembered all he had heard and read about it.

The Legion was an army for unwanted men, was it not? Well, Tovak was unwanted.

He made enquiries at the French consulate. Then to France—to the Bureau de Recruitement , in Rue St. Ouen, Rouen.

He went to Marseilles for initial training, after which he sailed with a detachment of recruits for Oran. This was followed by garrison duty in Algiers.

Finally, to this place. To Dini Sadazi. A stinking, sweltering cauldron, which served as an advance base for North Morocco.

And it was here in Sadazi that the letter had reached him.

The letter from Annice.

Annice had not died. But for two years she had been confined, with thousands of others, in a displaced persons camp. When at last she was free she had gone to Prague to find Tovak. And when she found out what had happened to him she went to the French consulate. It was with the help of the consulate that her letter had been forwarded to him.

She was waiting for him! Annice was in Prague!

He had to get to her.

And that was why he had deserted. It was his only hope. Yes, a ridiculously slender one, but better than no hope at all. And it had failed. Failed tragically. He had been arrested before he even got out of Sadazi. A town patrol had picked him up.

It was then that the madness gripped him. He had fought with his escort. Fought with the only weapon to hand, which was his knife. It was a sharp knife. And with it he had killed a legionnaire.

There could be only one penalty. The court martial had been no more than a tedious formality.

He had wanted to get it over—to end forever the bitterness and the misery. In more distant prospect, death had seemed desirable. But not now. Now that it was imminent.

Annice had enclosed the photograph with the letter and it had been taken recently.

Tovak put a shaking finger on it, trying to imagine that he was touching the living flesh.

She was still beautiful. Her flaxen hair still fell to her shoulders, her eyes still had that level calm, her rich mouth still suggested unbroken courage.