with grime. Hidden somewhere in the complex of fallen-down sheds was a pig they were fattening for market; de Milja and Fedin could hear it grunting and snuffling in the mud.
“When will the pig be ready?” de Milja said.
“October,” one of the brothers said. “‘Cannibal,’ we call him.”
“We need a little Citroen truck, a delivery truck.”
“Expensive, such things.”
“We know.”
“Could be fifteen thousand francs.”
“Maybe nine.”
“Fifteen, I think I said.”
“Eleven, then.”
“What money?”
“French francs.”
“We like those American dollars.”
“Francs is what we have.”
“Fourteen five—don’t say we didn’t give you a break. Have it with you?”
De Milja showed a packet of notes, the man nodded and grunted with satisfaction. When he leaned close, de Milja could smell the wine in his sweat. “What country do you come from?” he asked. “I want to hear about it.” The second brother had left the shack abruptly after the money was shown—de Milja had barely noticed that he’d gone. Now Fedin stood at the door, shaking his head in mock disillusion and pointing a Luger out into the yard. “Put that down,” he said.
The response was a whine. “I was just going to cut up some firewood. To cook the lunch.”
They used what they had:
Whatever remained of the old Polish networks, sturdy White Russian operatives who’d put in their time for a variety of services, friends, friends of friends. They were not so concerned about being betrayed to the Germans. That would happen—it was just a question of when, and whether or not they would be surprised when they figured out who’d done it.
“As you get older, you accept venality. Then you learn to like it—a certainty in an uncertain world.” Fedin the skull, the Luger under his worker’s apron, cigarette holder clenched in his teeth as though he were a Chinese warlord in a Fu Manchu film.
Wearing workmen’s smocks, they drove their little delivery van slowly through what remained of the streets of Dunkirk. Two hundred thousand weapons had been left on the oil-stained beaches, abandoned by the British Expeditionary Force and several French divisions making their escape across the Channel. All along the shore, German soldiers were trying to deal with the mess, stripping tires from shot-up trucks, emptying ammunition from machine-gun belts.
In the back streets they found a heavy woman who walked with a cane and kept a dollmaker’s shop not far from the canals that ran out into the countryside. She painted eyebrows on tiny doll heads with a cat’s whisker, and counted barges when she walked her elderly poodle. She was a Frenchwoman; her Polish coal-miner husband had gone off to fight in Spain in the Dabrowsky Brigade, and that was the last she’d heard of him. De Milja’s predecessor had found her through a relief organization, and now the Polish service was her
“A hard week, Monsieur,” she said as de Milja counted out francs.
“You’re confident of your numbers?”
“Oh yes, Monsieur. One hundred and seven of the beastly things. It took four expeditions to find them all.”
“Well then, keep up the good work. This may go on for months.”
“Mmm? Poor Roquette.” The poodle’s tail managed a single listless thump against the floorboards when she heard her name. Perhaps, de Milja thought, Rocket had been the right name for her at one time, but that was long ago. “Having to walk all those miles on that cinder path,” the woman added.
“Buy her a lamb chop,” de Milja said, counting out some extra francs into the attentive hand.
Fedin was exactly right, de Milja thought, as a German sentry waved them away from a turnoff for the coastal road—the pleasure of venality was that Madame would be faithful as long as the francs held out.
The van rolled to a stop. De Milja climbed out and approached the sentry. “Excuse, kind sir. This place?” He showed the soldier, who smiled involuntarily at de Milja’s eccentric German, a commissary form. On the bottom, an inventory of Vienna sausage and tinned sardines; on top, an address.
“The airfield,” the sentry said. “You must go down this road, but mind your own business.”
The Germans were of two minds, it seemed to him. Down the beach road, all preparations were defensive. Engineered—concrete— positions with heavy machine guns pointing out into the Channel. Rows of concrete teeth sunk into the sand at the low-tide mark, strung with generous coils of barbed wire. French POWs were digging trenches and building antiaircraft gun emplacements, and clusters of artillery had been positioned just behind the sand dunes. This was nothing to do with an invasion of England: this was somebody worried that the British were coming back, unlikely as that seemed. But then somebody,
Fedin laid it out for him. Quite a number of the Russian generals in Paris had never been in anyone’s army, but Fedin was a real general who’d commanded real troops in battle and done well at it. De Milja watched with admiration as he planned the invasion of Britain on a cafe napkin.
“Twelve divisions,” he said. “Hand-picked. With a hundred thousand men in the first wave, all along the English coastline for, say, two hundred miles. That’s the Wehrmacht thinking—spread the invasion, thin down the British defense forces, dissipate energy, resources, everything. Lots of refugees moving on the roads, miles and miles for the ammunition trucks to cover, honking all the time to get Mrs. Jones and her baby carriage out of the way.
“For the German navy, on the other hand, the two-hundred-mile spread is a nightmare, precisely what they don’t want. They need a concentrated beachhead, ships hurrying back and forth across the Channel, multiplying their load capabilities by the hour, with airplanes overhead to keep the British bombers away.”
“That’s the key.”
“Yes, that’s the key. If they can keep the RAF out of their business, the Germans can secure the beaches. That will do it. They hold out seventy-two hours, twenty-five divisions make the crossing, with the tanks, the big guns, all the stuff that wins wars. Churchill will demand that Roosevelt send clouds of warplanes, Roosevelt will give an uplifting speech and do nothing, the governments-in-exile will make a run for Canada, and that will be that. The New Europe will be in place; a sort of hardheaded trade association with German consultants making sure it all goes the way they want.”
“What will it take to get across the Channel?”
The cafe was on the seafront in Veulettes. General Fedin stared out at the calm sea for a moment, then started a new napkin. “Well, let’s say . . . about two thousand barges should do it. With their bows refitted with ramps that can be raised and lowered. They’ll want motor launches, for speed, to get the beach-masters and the medical people and staff officers moved around. About twelve hundred of those. To move the barges back and forth—five hundred tugboats, seagoing or adapted for it. And two hundred transport ships. That’s for the big stuff, tanks and heavy guns and repair shops—and for the horses, which still do eighty percent of the army’s haulage.”
“Four thousand ships. That’s it?”
Fedin shrugged. War was logistics. You got your infantry extra socks, they marched another thirty miles.
“They’ll need decent weather. They can’t afford to wait for autumn, the Channel will swamp the barges. So,
