'Let's keep going,' said Tanner. 'It would be good to be on the main road by first light.' He paused to get some field dressings, then hurried back to the cab. Passing the bandages to Anna, he pushed the stick into gear and rolled forward.
Hauptmann Wolf Zellner had seen the explosion before he heard it: a bright orange glow lighting the sky to the east. A moment later, the report. Then a sickening feeling swept over him. An almost speechless von Poncets had immediately sent a signal to Vinstra. A quarter of an hour later the truth was revealed: around fifteen men, dressed in German uniforms, had infiltrated the town and stolen two troop carriers. And the bridge had been blown to pieces.
On hearing this news rage gripped him, rage he feared he would not be able to control. Staggering outside, he walked to the water's edge, picked up a large rock and hurled it at one of the moored dinghies. The boat sank, until all that remained was a length of rope disappearing beneath the water.
Zellner watched it. His rage had abated slightly but he was now overcome by the oppressive weight of despair. Tanner, he thought, and hurled another rock into the lake. Somehow he would have his revenge. 'I swear it.'
Chapter 22
May Day, 1940 - Wednesday - and as the dawn rose to their right, the sun gleaming over the mountains amid a cloudless sky, the signs were that summer had indeed arrived.
'Damn it,' said Tanner. 'What we want is a bit of rain and low cloud.' The speed with which winter seemed to have passed had surprised him. 'What happened to spring?' he asked Anna.
She laughed. 'We don't have one. Winter then summer. Now it's summer.'
Tanner glanced down at Chevannes' bloodied head, wrapped in an assortment of stained bandages and torn strips of lining from a German tunic. 'Stupid bugger,' he said.
Chevannes moaned.
'What happened to him, Jack?' Anna asked him, the Frenchman's head still resting in her lap. 'Was there something wrong with the rifle?'
'He put a clip of French ammunition into a German breech. The French rifles use a fractionally smaller cartridge than the German ones - but it's enough to bugger up the firing mechanism. When he fired, the bolt sprang back and hit him in the face. He should have known, but in the heat of the moment - well, he'll have a whopping scar to remind him not to make that mistake again.'
They had emerged into a deep, narrow valley, with mountains towering steeply at either side. Tanner whistled as he craned his neck to admire one of the most breathtaking stretches of scenery he had ever seen. Then, glancing at his petrol gauge, he saw the tank was almost empty.
Chevannes moaned again, louder this time.
'Jack,' said Anna, 'we need to stop. He needs attention.'
'We'll pull in at a farm. Perhaps we can find out what's happening.'
They reached a settlement called Lia, another collection of farmsteads nestling beside the river. The grey, tired fields of a week earlier had already been replaced by lush green pasture. Approaching a brightly coloured red farmhouse with clean white wooden fencing, Tanner slowed. 'This looks smarter than most.'
'You think they will have a wireless?'
'That's what I’m hoping.'
The farmer and his family had been asleep but they seemed untroubled to be roused prematurely by two trucks of fugitive troops pulling into their yard. As the men soon gathered, they had not been the first to arrive there over the past couple of days: since the fighting at
Otta had ended, troops had been streaming past, most by train, but a fair number in trucks and even on foot. And while the farmer had a radio set, he made it clear that the news announced on the wireless had told him nothing he couldn't see with his own eyes; the British were evacuating. 'You're the last,' he told Nielssen. 'You'd better hurry.'
The farmer and his wife brewed coffee and gave them bread while Anna examined Bell and Chevannes. Bell's wound was clean enough - a bullet had gone through his upper arm, but no bones had been broken. Chevannes' head, however, was a mess. His right cheekbone had been smashed, and a large gash had been torn in the side of his face, leaving the eyeball to hang loose. As Anna removed the bandages he screamed again. 'He needs pain relief,' she said.
'I don't have any,' said Tanner.
Neither did the farmer - not morphine at any rate - but he did have whisky. 'Take it,' he told Anna. 'Get him drunk.'
They made a bed of sorts for the lieutenant and laid him in the back of the first truck, then poured one of the five-gallon fuel cans into the tank. 'Change back into your own uniforms,' Tanner told his men.
When they continued on their way north, Tanner and Anna were alone in the cab. She yawned and leant her head on his shoulder. He could feel the warmth of her body against his. If they managed to reach Andalsnes, he wondered whether she would come with them to Britain. He hoped so.
'How are you feeling?' he asked.
'I don't know. Tired. I can't stop thinking about last night - getting through the town. And about Larsen. It seems so incredible.'
'Yes ... yes, it does.'
'I thought he was going to shoot you.'
'No,' said Tanner. 'He didn't have it in him. He liked us too much. In any case, it's one thing shooting someone from a distance - they're not real people, just objects - but quite another killing someone when you're face to face. It's not impersonal then. I suppose it was a bit of a gamble, but I was pretty certain he wasn't going to fire.'
She smiled at this. 'Always so rational.'
'What was he saying to Nielssen at the end?'
'Larsen? He said he'd had to do it. That they had threatened his family. And then he kept saying, "I should have turned you in at Okset, but I was trying to protect Stig." Then Nielssen said, "Some protection that was." And that's when he killed him.'
'What did he mean by that?'
'I asked Nielssen a moment ago. Apparently they had been hiding at a farm in a village called Okset, north of Elverum. It had belonged to Larsen's cousin. The Germans had turned up and searched for them. They had even been led by the same officer - Zellner?'Zellner? Bloody hell.'
'Yes, him,' Anna continued. 'Nielssen hadn't seen him, but Larsen did and recognized him when you first captured him in the fight above our farm. Anyway, although Larsen had the perfect opportunity to betray them there and then, he hadn't wanted to get his cousin into trouble and kept quiet while Zellner and his men searched the place. After the Germans had gone, they took his cousin's truck, crossed the river and headed north. But at that point Larsen realized the Germans would have seen them from the other side of the river.'
'And put two and two together,' said Tanner.
'Exactly. And since then he worried not only about the fate of his wife and daughters but also his cousin and his cousin's family.'
'Christ,' said Tanner. 'What a bloody mess.'
'Enemy aircraft!' A shout from behind.
'Damn, damn, damn!' cursed Tanner. Pasture still stretched a hundred yards or more to their right, while on their left the ground sloped down towards the river. They were hopelessly exposed. He felt Anna's hand grip his arm. 'There's no cover,' he said, 'We've got to hope for the best.' He pressed his foot on the throttle. 'Can you see them, Mac?' he shouted.
'Yes, Sarge. Four of them coming up behind, straight down the valley!'
'Can you tell what they are?'
A pause, then Bell said, 'They're bloody Messerschmitts, Sarge, 110s.'