Winston bent over the body and Audley stared across him to Hauptmann Grafenberg.
'This is as far as you go, Captain. We're quits now—one all. I give you back your parole.' He blinked furiously. 'You can wait for us to come back if you like—or you can take your chance from here.
Just. . . thanks for helping us, anyway.'
Grafenberg frowned. 'But I have not done anything.'
Audley shook his head. 'From where I'm standing you've done quite a lot.'
'Then perhaps I can do more.' The German gave a tiny shrug.
'Yeah. And perhaps you can get yourself killed.' Winston didn't even bother to look up.
'Perhaps.' Grafenberg didn't bother to look down.
Audley swallowed. 'It really isn't your war, you know, Captain.'
'Huh!' Winston rolled the unconscious body over. 'You can say that again for me.'
Grafenberg moved sideways until he stood in the open gateway. 'True. But then I do not have a war any more.'
Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
'Then you ought to quit while you're ahead.' Winston peeled off the blouse.
'And since you have given back to me my parole—my word of honour—then I am at liberty to volunteer, I think?' Grafenberg ignored the American. 'And also . . . with me you may do again what you have done here—I think that also.'
Winston stood up between them, ripping open his own combat jacket as he did so. 'And I think you're right— and I
Butler handed him the machine pistol and the greasy beret.
'Okay'—Winston adjusted the beret with a savage tug—'okay, Lieutenant. Let's go, then.'
'Wait—' Audley began desperately, still staring at the German.
'Wait hell!' Winston pointed the machine pistol at the German. 'He wants to get himself killed, that's his business. One war's as good as another, so he gets what he wants it makes no difference one way or the other. Just so we get it over quickly, that's all.
23.
They heard the sound of the sledge hammer before the chateau came into view through the trees.
'Over there!' Dr. de Courcy pointed to the left just as Butler caught sight of the familiar creamy stone and blue-black slate pinnacles ahead between the trees.
'But that's on the other side of the river—not in the chateau.' Audley's words came a fraction of a second before Butler identified the angle of difference between the sight of the chateau and the sound of the hammer.
They plunged through the screen of undergrowth separating the track from the river, suddenly heedless of the discipline which had marched them from the gate.
'Down, for God's sake!' Audley's command caught Butler just in time as the undergrowth thinned at the river's edge. He caught sight of the dark olive-green water, and a high stone-walled bank opposite which Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
surprised him as he direw himself flat: somehow he had expected the broad sandy channel of the Loire, but here the river—whatever river it was—had been caught between man-made banks.
'The tower?' Audley threw himself down beside him.
'The bridge,' hissed Winston on his other side. 'The goddamn bridge!'
The words and the sound both drew Butler's eye upstream, to a graceful, two-arched bridge. On the far bank it was dominated by a great round tower which was connected to it by a wall of stone filling the gap between the drop of the bank and the abutment from which the first arch rose—
There were three British soldiers standing at the foot of the wall—
—and one of them was attacking the wall with a sledge hammer.
It was Sergeant Purvis.
'What the hell . . . ?' The American left the rest of the question unasked.
'The fourth arch,' said Dr. de Courcy from behind them.
