Cold Harbour Read Free Page B

grille, remaining in darkness himself.
    “Good morning, Father,” Dietrich said in bad French. “Bless me for I have sinned.”
    “You certainly have, you bastard,” Craig Osbourne told him, pushed the silenced Walther through the flimsy grille and shot him between the eyes.
    Osbourne stepped out of the confessional box and at the same moment the young SS Captain opened the church door and peered in. He saw the General on his face, the back of his skull a sodden mass of blood and brain, Osbourne standing over him. The young officer drew his pistol and fired twice wildly, the sound of the shots deafening between the old walls. Osbourne returned the fire, catching him in the chest, knocking him back over one of the pews, then ran to the door.
    He peered out and saw Dietrich’s car parked at the gate, his own Kubelwagen beyond. Too late to reach it now for already a squad of SS, rifles at the ready, were running towards the church, attracted by the sound of firing.
    Osbourne turned, ran along the aisle and left from the back door by the sacristy, racing through the gravestones of the cemetery at the rear of the church, vaulting the low stone wall, and started up the hill to the wood above.
    They began shooting when he was half way up and he ran, zigzagging wildly, was almost there when a bullet plucked at his left sleeve sending him sideways to fall on one knee. He was up again in a second and sprinted over the brow of the hill. A moment later he was into the trees.
    HE RAN ON wildly, both arms up to cover his face against the flailing branches and where in the hell was he supposed to be running to? No transport and no way of reaching his rendezvous with that Lysander now. At least Dietrich was dead, but, as they used to say in SOE in the old days, a proper cock-up.
    There was a road in the valley below, more woods on the other side. He went sliding down through the trees, landing in a ditch, picked himself up and started to cross and then to his total astonishment, the Rolls-Royce limousine came round the corner and braked to a halt.
    René Dissard of the black eye-patch was at the wheel in his chauffeur’s uniform. The rear door was opened and Anne-Marie looked out. “Playing heroes again, Craig? You never change, do you? Come on, get in, for heaven’s sake and let’s get out of here.”
    AS THE ROLLS moved off, she nodded at the blood-soaked sleeve of his uniform. “Bad?”
    “I don’t think so.” Osbourne stuffed a handkerchief inside. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
    “Grand Pierre was in touch. As usual, just a voice on the phone. I still haven’t met the man.”
    “I have,” Craig told her. “You’re in for a shock when you do.”
    “Really? He says that Lysander pick-up isn’t on. Heavy fog and rain moving in from the Atlantic according to the Met. boys. I was supposed to wait for you at the farm and tell you, but I always had a bad feeling about this one. Decided to come along and see the action. We were on the other side of the village by the station. Heard the shooting and saw you running up the hill.”
    “Good thing for me,” Osbourne told her.
    “Yes, considering this effort wasn’t really any of my business. Anyway, René said you were bound to come this way.”
    She lit a cigarette and crossed one silken knee over the other, elegant as always in a black suit, a diamond brooch at the neck of the white silk blouse. The black hair was cut in a fringe across her forehead and curved under on each side, framing high cheekbones and pointed chin.
    “What are you staring at?” she demanded petulantly.
    “You,” he said. “Too much lipstick as usual, but otherwise, bloody marvellous.”
    “Oh, get under the seat and shut up,” she told him.
    She turned her legs to one side as Craig pulled down a flap revealing space beneath the seat. He crawled inside and she pushed the flap back into position. A moment later, they went round a corner and discovered a Kubelwagen across the road,