A Game for Heroes. Jack Higgins
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I tapped my eye patch. ‘Medically unfit for further service. You even got me a civil list pension. Send our American friend. It’s more his style.’
He produced a buff envelope from his inside pocket, took out a letter and handed it to me. ‘I hope you’ll find that explicit enough. When I discussed it with him, I did point out that there was always the possibility you might feel you’d done your share.’
The letter was from Downing Street, hand written and bore the usual signature. It informed me that I was returned to the active list forthwith and must consider myself to be under the order of Section D and Professor Henry Brandon in connection with Operation GRANDE PIERRE. A nice touch that for Grande Pierre had been my field name in the Vosges. The letter was stamped Action this day.
So that was very much that. I held the letter up. ‘The first personal one he ever sent me. Can I have it?’
He took it from my fingers. ‘Afterwards, Owen, when you come back.’
I nodded and sat down on the rock beside him again. ‘All right, Henry, you’d better tell me about it.’
‘According to our information, the island’s been reasonably heavily fortified,’ Henry said. ‘There was at one time a garrison of something like sixteen hundred, but during the last couple of years, it’s been drastically reduced. The airstrip never amounted to much and after it had been bombed half-a-dozen times, they abandoned it and withdrew the Luftwaffe personnel.’
‘What about the Navy?’
‘They tried to use it as an E-boat base for a while, but it never really worked out. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous those waters are and the tides are a law unto themselves. Plenty of times the harbour is completely unusable so the Navy pulled out as well, although they use it on occasion. That left mainly Artillery units and Pioneers.’
‘How many now?’
‘We think six hundred. Mainly old men and young boys. Things have changed since that glorious romp through France in 1940.’
‘How many islanders?’
‘Apparently you can pretty well count them on the fingers of one hand. Most of the population, as you know, chose to be evacuated to England in 1940 just before the occupation.’
‘Sixty or so stayed,’ I said. ‘Including the Seigneur and his daughter.’
‘Ah yes, Henri de Beaumarchais. He’s dead, it seems. Killed in the naval bombardment.’
I stared at him blankly not quite taking it in. ‘Dead – Henry de Beaumarchais? What naval bombardment?’
‘Ours last year. They had a go at the harbour from three miles out. His daughter is apparently still there, but almost everyone else was moved out six months back. I’m really not quite sure why she hadn’t gone with the others, but there it is.’
‘She will be Seigneur now,’ I said. ‘Lord of St Pierre. They had a woman once before, back in the thirteenth century. She used the male title. Simone will do the same. She has a great respect for tradition.’
I thought of her for a moment, out there beyond the horizon in the old manor house that had been the Seigneurie for untold generations. It had been a long war. She must have been lonely. Lonelier still, now that her father was gone.
It was almost five years since I had seen her. On a dark night in July, 1940, to be precise, a fortnight after the German occupation of the Channel Islands. I had gone in by submarine and landed from a rubber boat at La Grande Bay at the eastern end of the island. It had been as abortive a business as most similar exploits were at that time. I’d seen Simone and her father at the Seigneurie and discovered there were no more than two hundred Germans on the island. I was to be picked up a couple of hours before dawn and had begged them to come with me. They had refused, as I had known in my heart they would, but Simone had insisted on accompanying me to the beach. I remembered that now, and her face a pale blur in the darkness.
‘The thing is,’ Henry said, ‘we’re losing rather a lot of ships in the Channel area, starting six months ago. The same time most of the remaining population was evacuated, you’ll notice. Quite a shock when we discovered what it was.’
‘Secret weapons at this stage of the war?’
‘Good God, no. We knew about this thing as long ago as Anzio. The Germans were late getting into the underwater sabotage field of things with frogmen and so on. Rather surprising when you consider the Italians really started it all. Anyway, they did come up with a lethal little item called Nigger which they used with some success at Anzio.’
‘And now they’re trying it in the Channel?’
‘That’s about the size of it. All they’ve done is take a normal torpedo, scoop out the warhead and fix controls. There’s a glass cupola to protect the operator who sits astride the thing with a live torpedo slung underneath. The general idea is to point it at the target, release the second torpedo at the last minute and try to swerve out of the way.’
‘And where did they get the men to play that kind of game?’
‘The Brandenberg Division mainly. They seem to have provided the nearest thing the Germans have to our own Commandos. Some are survivors of Otto Skorzeny’s Danube group. Those frogmen of his gave the Russians hell up there.’
‘And you think they’re operating from St Pierre?’
‘Until three weeks ago at least.’
‘You’re certain of that?’
‘We’ve got someone who was there until then who says so. A man called Joseph St Martin. Turned up on the French coast near Granville in an open boat. Says he knows you.’
‘Oh yes, he knows me all right.’ I touched the bridge of my nose gently where the bone showed crooked. ‘He broke this for me when I was fourteen.’
‘Did he then?’ Henry said softly. ‘As a matter of interest, I’ve got him up at the house now.’
I frowned. ‘You’re moving fast aren’t you?’
‘No other choice. You must go in the day after tomorrow. The Navy tell me that if we miss that particular tide, conditions won’t be right for another three weeks.’
‘Let me get this straight. The general purpose of this affair is for me to get ashore, find out as much as I can about the Nigger operation and get off again, presumably during the same night?’
‘That’s about the size of it. I’m hoping the information St Martin can give you will help you to find your way about. There are still people on the island you could contact. Miss de Beaumarchais, for example.’
I sat there frowning as I tried to take it all in. ‘And you really think that this is important, Henry, at this stage in the war?’
He held up the famous letter. ‘The Government evidently does. If the Germans decide to fight in the Channel Islands instead of surrendering, this Nigger installation could wreak havoc with the ships of any invading force.’
‘And what about Fitzgerald? Where does he fit in?’
‘He’s a good man, Owen. Decorated three times. He’s been on the staff of the 21st Specialist Service Raiding Force for the past couple of years. They’re a mixed bunch. American Rangers, French and British Commandos. They specialize in small boat work, underwater sabotage and so on. Fitzgerald has raided across the Channel on twenty-three separate occasions.’
‘Are you including the time they blew up the empty lighthouse in Brittany and all those landings on uninhabited islands off the French coast and deserted beaches where they never saw a soul and no one saw them or was that another unit?’
‘Now you’re being bitter again.’
‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve as much respect for the