"Wrath of the Lion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Higgins Jack)

CHAPTER TWELVE

they were close to the island now and Marcel cut the engine to half-speed and took Foxhunter in slowly towards the dark arch. The speedboat bobbed behind them on a long towline and as Mallory looked out to sea a shadow moved in from the horizon, blanketing the stars.

Guyon stood by the rail a few feet away talking to de Beaumont in a low voice and Jacaud leaned against the wheelhouse, the sub-machine-gun in his hands. One of his eyes was half-closed, the right side of his face swollen and disfigured by a huge purple bruise, and his eyes stared at Mallory unwinkingly.

They moved into the dark entrance and Mallory shivered, chilled by the damp air, and then they were through. From end to end the cave was about a hundred yards long and perhaps fifty feet across. Beneath the surface, as he had discovered earlier, it was even wider.

The long stone jetty was brightly illuminated by two arc-lamps and they coasted in to tie up behind a magnificent forty-foot, steel-hulled motor-yacht, the name Fleur de Lys painted across her counter.

The submarine was moored on the far side, squat and black in the water, and looked even smaller than Mallory had imagined. A dozen or so men in the uniform of the French Navy worked busily, loading stores on board under the supervision of a slim, rather boyish-looking lieutenant in peaked cap and reefer jacket. As they went up the short ladder to the jetty, he came forward, saluting de Beaumont casually.

“How are things going, Fenelon?” de Beaumont asked. “Any snags?"

Fenelon shook his head. “We’ll be ready on schedule.”

“Good, I’ll give you a final briefing at 9 a.m.” Fenelon went back to his men and de Beaumont turned to Mallory. “Magnificent, isn’t she? And just the thing for our purposes. Small, compact – only needs a crew of sixteen. You’re familiar with the type?”

“Only on paper.”

“This one has quite a history. Built at Deutsche Werft in 1945 and sunk with all hands within a month of commissioning. After she was raised she was transferred to the French.”

“And now she’s yours,” Mallory said. “A chequered career.”

A body was against the far wall covered by a tarpaulin, webbed feet turned to one side, blood streaking the pool of sea-water in which it lay.

“We couldn’t find the other one. The current must have taken him under the reef.” De Beaumont shook his head. “A nasty way to die.”

The words seemed to carry an implicit threat, but Mallory refused to be drawn, and de Beaumont smiled faintly and led the way across to where a flight of stone steps lifted a hundred feet into the gloom, curving round one wall of the cave. They mounted the steps and emerged on to a stone landing, and de Beaumont led the way to the far end of a passage, passing several doors. One or two stood open to show narrow service bunks and grey blankets neatly folded. From a side entrance there came the smell of cooking.

He opened another door and they entered a large hall, great curved beams of oak arching into the gloom. There was a wide marble staircase and, above it, a gallery. At one side logs blazed in an immense medieval fireplace.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it? The money these Victorian industrialists must have had to throw around, and every stone brought in by boat.”

His tone was casual, mannered. He might have been a rather complacent host showing a friend over his new place. They went up the great staircase and moved along the gallery to the far end. De Beaumont opened a door to disclose a narrow spiral staircase. At intervals there were slotted windows and Mallory could see far out to sea as they mounted higher and higher.

They reached a stone landing and paused outside a door. De Beaumont went in, leaving it ajar. The room contained a great deal of radio equipment and an operator sat before a transmitting set, headphones clamped to his ears. He stood up when de Beaumont appeared. There was a murmur of conversation and then the Colonel came back outside.

He continued up the spiral staircase, Mallory, Guyon and

Marcel following behind, Jacaud bringing up the rear. At last they emerged on a small landing and de Beaumont opened his final door.

The room was circular in shape and quite large. It was comfortably furnished, Persian carpets covering the floor, logs burning brightly in the wide fireplace. The walls were lined with books except for a section perhaps twenty feet long covered by a velvet curtain. De Beaumont pulled it to one side, revealing a curved glass window.

“One of my little improvements. On a clear day you can see France.” He indicated a chair by the fire. “If you please.”

Mallory sat in the chair and Jacaud moved to stand behind him, the sub-machine-gun held ready. Marcel stood by the window, a revolver in his right hand held against his thigh. Guyon remained by the door and Mallory looked across at him. Guyon returned his gaze calmly, giving nothing away, and Mallory turned to de Beaumont, who was now sitting in the opposite chair.

“I will not insult your intelligence by fencing with you, Colonel Mallory,” he said. “For some time I was a prisoner of the Viets in Indo-China. There is little they failed to teach me at first hand about the extraction of information from the uncooperative. Jacaud was senior warrant officer of my regiment. He shared my experiences. I need hardly add that he would welcome an opportunity to experiment.”

“No need to go on,” Mallory said. “I get the point.”

“Excellent,” de Beaumont said. “We can get down to business. As you may now have deduced for yourself, Captain Guyon is something of a double agent. When the Deuxieme offered him employment they were not aware that he was already a loyal member of the O.A.S. A most convenient arrangement. He confirms the fact that the Bureau had no real grounds for suspecting L’Alouette to be in hiding here. That his assignment to lie de Roc to work with you was at the request of British Intelligence. I’d like to know why.”

“We had a man here watching you,” Mallory said. “Just routine, because of who you are and what you are. He drifted in on the tide the other evening. Accidental drowning was the coroner’s verdict.”

“He had a habit of taking long walks on the cliffs after dark with a pair of night-glasses,” de Beaumont said. “Rather dangerous. Someone should have warned him.”

“You made a mistake there,” Mallory said. “To my chief it meant only one thing. Our man had seen something important. With the French combing every creek and inlet on their side of the Channel it gave him a rather nasty feeling to think that she might be sitting it out in the Channel Islands.”

“A pity,” de Beaumont said. “Now I must move out rather sooner than I had intended. On the other hand, neither my immediate nor long-term plans will be affected in the slightest.” He stood up and smiled politely. “Under happier circumstances I should have enjoyed talking to you. We must have a great deal in common. I’m sure you’ll understand that my time is limited.”

“Naturally,” Mallory said ironically and got to his feet.

He had often wondered about this moment, how it would come and when. The strange thing was that he was not afraid. More curious than anything else. Jacaud moved restlessly behind him and Marcel came away from the wall, the gun still held against his leg.

De Beaumont took a revolver from his pocket, crossed to Guyon and handed it to him. “Will you do the honours, Captain? A soldier’s end, I think.”

Guymon’s hand tightened on the butt of the revolver and he looked across at Mallory, his face very white. Quite suddenly he grabbed de Beaumont by the front of his coat, pulling him forward, and rammed the barrel of the revolver against his throat.

There was a moment of stillness and then de Beaumont laughed gently. “You know, our friends in Paris have been worried about you for some time now, Guyon. I can understand why. You’re slipping. I should have thought an officer of your experience would have been able to tell the difference in weight between a revolver loaded with blanks and one loaded with live ammunition.”

He reached up and took the revolver from Guymon’s hand and Guyon looked across at Mallory and smiled wryly. “Sometimes we can be too clever, my friend.”

“Nice to have you back,” Mallory said.

De Beaumont opened the door and nodded to Marcel. “Take him below and watch him carefully. I’ll send Colonel Mallory down later.”

He closed the door behind them, turned to Mallory and smiled. “And now that we all know exactly where we are we can perhaps relax for half an hour.” He took a bottle and two glasses from a cupboard in the corner and returned to his chair. “This is really quite an excellent cognac. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Mallory sat in the opposite chair, aware of Jacaud at his back, and waited for what was to come. He accepted a glass of cognac, drank a little and leaned back. “I can’t understand what you hope to gain from all this. Murder and assassination will only lose you what little support you command.”

“A matter of opinion,” de Beaumont said. “The only politics which seem to matter in this modern world are the politics of violence. Palestine, Cyprus and Algeria were all examples of victory achieved by a deliberate and carefully planned use of violence and assassination. We can do the same.”

“The circumstances are completely different. In the cases you’ve quoted, nationalistic elements were opposed to a colonial power. In your own, Frenchmen are murdering Frenchmen.”

“They are not worthy of the name, the swine we have dealt with so far. Loud-mouths, professional liberals and scheming politicians who feathered their own nests while I and men like me rotted in the Viet prison camps.” De Beaumont laughed bitterly. “I remember our homecoming only too well. Booed all the way into Marseilles by Communist dock workers.”

“Ancient history,” Mallory said. “Nobody wants to know. In any case, unless they’d been through the same experience themselves they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But you have1,” de Beaumont said. “Deep inside, I think you know what I mean. You learned a hard lesson from the Chinese. You put it down in cold print in that book of yours. What happened when you put it into practice?”

He stared into the fire, a frown on his face. “It was going to be different in Algeria, we were certain of that. We fought the fells in the jebel of the Atlas Mountains, in the heat of the Sahara, in the alleys of Algiers, and we were beating them. In the end we had them by the throat.”

He turned to Mallory. “I was in the army plot of the 13th May, 1958. They gave us no choice. They would have arrested my friends and me, tried us on trumped-up atrocity charges, designed to please the loud-mouths and fellow-travelers back home in Paris. We put de Gaulle in power because we believed in the ideal of a French Algeria, a greater France.”

“And once he was in control he did exactly the opposite to what you had intended,” Mallory said. “One of the great ironies of post-war history.”

De Beaumont swallowed some more cognac and continued. “Even more ironic that I, Phillipe de Beaumont, descendant of one of the greatest of French military families, should have helped place in power the man who has destroyed the greatness of his country.”

“That remains to be seen,” Mallory said. “I’d say that Charles de Gaulle was moved by one thing only – deep patriotism. Whatever he’s done he’s done because he thought it best for France.”

De Beaumont shrugged. “So we disagree? It’s of little moment. After his visit to St. Malo on the 3rd of next month he will no longer present a problem.”

“I don’t know what you have in mind, but I wouldn’t count on anything. How many times have your people failed now? Eight, isn’t it?”

“I flatter myself that my own organisation has been rather more successful. These affairs need the trained mind, Malory. Everything I handle is a military operation, planned to the last detail in conditions of the strictest security. L’Alouette affair, I have handled personally from the beginning. My colleagues in Paris know nothing about it. I work strictly on my own and use them as an information service only.”

Mallory shook his head. "You can’t last much longer. You’re working on too big a scale. Already L’Alouette's become more of a liability than anything else.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong.” De Beaumont got to his feet, took a couple of charts from the cupboard beside his chair and crossed to a small table. “Come over here. You’ll find this interesting.”

They were Admiralty charts of the area between Guernsey and the French coast and he joined them together quickly. “Here is He de Roc and St. Pierre, thirty miles south-west of Guernsey. The nearest French soil is Pointe du Chateau, only twenty miles away. You know the area?”

Mallory shook his head. “The closest I’ve been is Brest.”

“A dangerous coast of small islands and reefs, lonely and wild. You will notice lie de Monte only a quarter of a mile off the coast, the Gironde Marshes opposite. There is a small cottage on an island perhaps half a mile into the marsh on the main creek. Eight miles from a road and very lonely. Not even a telephone. There are only two people in residence at the moment.”

“And you want them?”

“Only the man. Henri Granville.”

Mallory straightened, a frown on his face. “You mean Granville the judge, the Procureur General who retired last month?”

“I congratulate you on your intimate knowledge of French affairs. He arrived there with his wife yesterday. They are quite alone. Of course, no one is supposed to know. He’s fond of solitude – solitude and birds. Unfortunately for him, a contact of mine in Paris got news of his movements last night and let me know at once. I’m sending Jacaud across in L’Alouette later today. His execution should cause quite a stir.”

“You’re crazy,” Mallory said. “He must be eighty if he’s a day. On top of that, he’s one of the best-loved men in France. God in heaven, everybody loves Granville! Politics doesn’t enter into it.”

“On three occasions now he has presided at tribunals which have condemned old comrades of mine to death,” de Beaumont said. “Now he must pay the consequences. By striking at Granville we prove once and for all that we are a force to be reckoned with. That no man, however powerful, no matter what his public standing, is safe from our vengeance.”

“Henri Granville never condemned anyone in his life without good reason. Harm him in any way and you’ll bring the mountain in on you.” Mallory shook his head. “You’ll never get away with it.”

De Beaumont smiled faintly, crossed to the fire and poured more cognac into his glass. “You think not?” He swallowed a little of the cognac and sighed. “I will postpone your execution till this evening. By that time Jacaud will have returned. It will give me some satisfaction in sending you to your death with the knowledge that Henri Granville has preceded you.”

“Which remains to be seen,” Mallory said.

De Beaumont turned and indicated a tattered battle standard hanging above the fireplace. “An ancestor of mine carried that himself at Waterloo when his standard-bearer was shot. It was with me at Dien-Bien-Phu. I managed to hang on to it during all those bitter months of captivity. You will notice it bears the motto of the de Beaumonts.”

"Who dares, wins",” Mallory said.

“I would remember that if I were you.”

“Something you seem to have forgotten,” Mallory said. “When that ancestor of yours picked up that standard at Waterloo he didn’t carry it forward on his own. There was a regiment of guards backing him up all the way and I seem to remember that at Dien-Bien-Phu you commanded a regiment of colonial paratroops. But, then, that’s France I’m speaking about. The real France. Something you wouldn’t know anything about.”

For a moment something glowed in de Beaumont’s eyes, but he pushed back his anger and forced a smile. Take him below, Jacaud. He and Guyon can spend their last hours together trying to solve an impossible problem. The thought will amuse me.”

Jacaud gave Mallory a push towards the door. As he opened it, de Beaumont said calmly: “And, Jacaud, when I next see Colonel Mallory I expect him to be in his present condition. You understand?”

Jacaud turned sharply, a growl rising in his throat. For a moment he seemed about to defy de Beaumont and then he turned suddenly and pushed Mallory forward.

They went down the spiral staircase, Mallory leading, all the time aware of the machine-gun at his back. The gallery was in half-darkness, the fire a heap of glowing ashes, as they crossed the hall and went through the door which led to the living-quarters and the cave.

At the end of a long whitewashed corridor they found Marcel sitting on a chair outside a door, reading a newspaper, the revolver stuck in his belt.

He looked up at Jacaud, eyes raised enquiringly. “When?”

“This evening when I get back from the mainland.” Jacaud turned to Mallory and patted the sub-machine-gun. A red glow seemed to light up behind the cold eyes. “Personally, Colonel Mallory.”

Mallory moved into the cell. As the door clanged behind him, Guyon swung his legs to the floor and sat looking at him.

He grinned suddenly. “You wouldn’t by any chance have such a thing as a cigarette on you, would you?