Barnes said it. Name, rank, serial number. Then he shut his mouth. He opened it a moment later when the officer who had been bending over the desk swung the stiffened side of his hand savagely across Barnes’ lips. He felt something give inside his mouth, felt around with his tongue, tasted blood, and spat out a broken tooth. Through half-closed eyes he saw Berg shake his head as though cautioning his fellow officer.
‘I should have introduced you,’ Berg went on. ‘This is Captain Dahlheim. Normally our method is to ask questions politely first and then exert pressure later, but we are short of hours. I should warn you that Captain Dahlheim becomes annoyed when people do not answer my questions properly.’
Barnes said it again. Name, rank, serial number, adding that under the Geneva Convention this was all the information he was obliged to give. Dahlheim was fiddling with the pine needles now and while his body temporarily masked him from Berg, Barnes lifted his wrists hard against the wire. It was quite impossible to get his hands loose.
‘But you are a spy,’ went on the unseen Berg. ‘Show him the clothes he was wearing when we found him.’
Dahlheim picked up a bundle from a chair and showed the clothes. For a horrible moment Barnes wondered whether they belonged to Jacques but he saw that they were a jacket and a pair of trousers of blue denim, common apparel for French workers in the fields. Jacques had worn a lounge suit. He must have escaped.
‘I’ve never worn those in my life and you know it.
‘Captain Dahlheim can confirm that we took those clothes off you while you were still unconscious. We can say you wore them to hide your uniform. And you had no means of identification. No pay-book.’ He dropped the pay-book into a drawer and closed it. ‘So you are a spy and can be treated in any way we like.’
Was Berg bluffing? Barnes could see his white face now and as he became accustomed to the single desk light he thought the German was older than he had thought at first. He felt sick with fury. He had been on the last lap, had completed the most difficult reconnaissance he had ever undertaken, had been within a five-minute walk of Bert’s refuge, and because of a momentary lack of alertness he had been captured. And as the realization dawned on him, the realization of how unlikely it was that he would ever escape, he found one thought torturing his mind. He had come to Lemont because the battle plan they had taken from the German staff car showed beyond doubt that here was the point of maximum peril for the BEF. And now he believed that he had found a way of striking a blow against the 14th Panzer Division, the spearhead of the attack on Dunkirk, only to find himself a prisoner. What was it Berg was saying?
‘We have not a great deal of time, Sergeant Barnes.’
‘None of us have that here.’
‘For various reasons it is a matter of urgency that you answer my questions quickly. Where is your unit? What is the British plan?’ He paused. ‘Dahlheim! Barnes is not going to reply again.’
Dahlheim straightened up and turned round. The needles were arranged in a neat row, their sharp points turned towards Barnes under the cone of light. Beneath the peaked cap Dahlheim’s face was round, his eyes seeming half asleep, and for the first time Barnes saw that he wore a black and silver collar-patch bearing a curious runic sign. Captain Dahlheim was a member of the SS.
By now Barnes found that his eyes were growing accustomed to the semi-darkness beyond the cone of light and behind the seated Berg he could see a window. The curtain was drawn across it but at one side there was a gap, and because of the deep shadow beyond the desk light he could see a wedge of moonlit night. Dahlheim was reaching his hand to his side and Barnes expected him to draw the pistol from his leather hip holster, but instead he took a length of cord from his pocket and wrapped it round both hands, He took his time over this little exercise, watching Barnes carefully, then without speaking he went past the chair and disappeared behind it. Guessing what was coming, Barnes tensed himself.
Reynolds could see the sentry standing outside the small house and he also saw the stationary motor-cycle and "side-car close by. It was the first sign of life he had seen since entering the village. He took several quiet paces away from the road down a pathway between stone walls. Now he was well under cover, two houses away from where the sentry mounted guard. For a minute he stood there, undecided what to do. It was probably the first time in his Army career that he had performed these two actions and both of them worried him – he had disobeyed an order and he had taken an initiative without reference to any superior. He kept wondering whether he ought not to go back.
Barnes had specifically told him to stay with the tank and now Bert was a good five minutes’ walk away. Only an overwhelming feeling that something had happened to Barnes had prompted his action and he had firmly refused Colburn’s offer to come instead. A pilot’s place was in the air – they weren’t much good on the ground, Reynolds had reasoned to himself. Now his great dread was that he had missed Barnes and Jacques coming back and that already his sergeant was asking Colburn where the devil Reynolds was. He’d better go back, he decided, but not along the road – that was far too dangerous. There must be another way back along the rear of these houses. Yes, he’d go back immediately. Barnes was able to look after himself.
He reached the end of the wall and lifted his head cautiously. Light from a window two houses away spilled out into the night. It must be some sort of German HQ, a good place to keep away from. He started retreating along the footpath which ran behind the back garden wall and then looked over his shoulder. The light puzzled him. Perhaps he’d better check: Barnes might want to know who was there. In for a penny, in for a pound, as his father was fond of saying. Keeping his head well down, he crept along the back wall, counting gates. This must be the right one. The gate wasn’t quite closed and when he pushed it gently it swung back inwards without making a sound. The vague outline of the lighted window was broken up by the branches of fruit trees which stood in the garden. He listened carefully and peered round the end wall to look along another pathway which led back to the road. If the sentry decided to walk up there while he was inside the garden he would be nicely trapped. In for a penny…
Creeping down a garden path he reached the back of the house close to the window and saw that there was a gap in the curtain. Ten-to-one the people inside would be staring straight at the window when he looked in, but he felt he must see what was going on, so he pressed one hand against the wall, eased himself forward, caught a quick glimpse and stepped back. He had glanced inside at the moment when Dahlheim had walked behind Barnes’ chair. He had seen his sergeant helpless, the only time he had ever seen Barnes in this state, and for a few seconds he was stunned, but his mood swiftly changed to one of fury.
He went back up the garden, out of the gateway, down the pathway between the houses, his hand extracting the knife from its sheath, a knife which he had carefully honed to a razor’s edge, the point like a needle, the condition in which an ex-fishmonger was prone to keep his knives. At the end of the path he waited behind the wall and listened to the sentry’s footsteps. The German must have become bored with standing and now he paced a steady sentry-go – ten paces away, ten paces back again. While he listened Reynolds remembered a certain guard duty he had mounted late one night at a remote camp outside Hull. Alone in the dark, he had particularly disliked the moment when he had stopped to turn, still keeping step as he revolved through one hundred and eighty degrees, and this was the moment he was waiting for now.
The sentry was coming his way again. Eight, nine, ten… Leaving the safety of the wall Reynolds moved with a terrible determination, seeing the back of the German only six feet away. His hand rose above shoulder level and with the same movement he crept forward three quiet paces, driving the knife savagely down into the uniformed back. He felt it shearing through cloth, driving down deeper, jerking briefly as it grazed bone and then sank deeper still. The back fell away from him and the sentry let out one howling shriek. Reynolds was sure half the street had heard the sound as he bent over to grab the rifle and fixed bayonet, tearing the strap loose from the limp arm.