The '44 Vintage

'Yes.'

'And we've been heading for it from the start—but you just forgot to tell us. Is that it?'

'No. That isn't it at all, Sergeant.'

'So why are we heading for it now, then?'

'Why?' Audley closed his eyes for a second. 'If you were on the run back in Texas—'

'Chicago, Illinois. And Jesus!—I wish I was there now!'

'Chicago, Illinois. If you were on the run in Chicago, Illinois—on the run from the gangsters, Sergeant . . . would you go home to your parents?'

'Hell no! Not unless—' Winston stopped.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

'Not unless you were desperate. Not unless you'd tried everything else.' Audley regarded the American stonily. 'So I am desperate now— and I can't think of anything else. So I'm going home.'

16. How Second Lieutenant Audley came home again

Butler lay exhausted among the vines on the edge of the track to the Chateau Le Chais d'Auray, watching the moonlight polish the dark slates on the little conical tower nearest to him.

The important thing was not to go to sleep, he decided.

They had marched the day into the afternoon, and the afternoon into the evening, and the evening into the night.

First they had force-marched out of necessity, simply to put distance between themselves and the scene of the air strike.

Then they had settled into the rhythm of a route march, by side roads and country tracks, and over fields to skirt round villages, and through hedges and thickets to avoid prying eyes.

But a route march was no problem: it was what a soldier's legs were for, and the farmlands of Touraine were nothing to a soldier who had trained on the high moors of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the mountains of Wales.

Yet each five-minute halt was a little more welcome than the last one. And after each halt it took a little longer to get back into the rhythm. And so, by slow degrees, the route march became an endurance test But at least they were going somewhere at last, because Second Lieutenant Audley studied each signpost and changed direction accordingly.

And once, when they surprised a small boy beside a fish-pond, Audley exchanged their last slab of ration chocolate for a pointing finger.

Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

Loches?

That way, the finger pointed.

La Roche?

That way.

Channay-les Pins?

That way.

The urchin never said a word from first to last, and scuttled away smartly as they set out for Channay.

After which they retraced their steps and headed for La Roche.

Audley didn't trust anyone any more, not even small boys.

Or German captains.

'Hauptmann . . .' Audley seemed embarrassed. The great bruise on his cheek was less black now, more like a dark stain half camouflaged by dust and sweat.

The German stirred nervously where he lay, brushing at his hair with his chained hands. 'Lieutenant?'

'There are . . . some things we have to get quite clear.'

'Some things?' the German swallowed nervously. 'What things, please?'

'The Frenchman said you were in the plot against Hitler. But you've said that you weren't.' Audley paused, then pointed to the handcuffs. 'So why are you wearing those?'

'Yeah.' Winston rolled sideways from where he'd flopped down exhausted a moment before. He held up his head with one hand and started to massage his thigh with the other. 'I'd like to get the answer to that too, Captain.'

The German looked from one to the other. 'I have given you my parole— my word of honour.'

'That's right—so you did.' The American nodded. 'But I heard tell that all you boys swear an oath to Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage

the Fuhrer. Like a word of honour, huh?' He nodded again. 'And that makes you a kind of a problem to us.'

'How ... a kind of problem, please?'

'Well now ... it wouldn't be a problem if you had tried to give the Fuhrer the business, like the Frenchman said you had. Because then you'd be on our side, because that 'ud be the only side you'd got left. But that's where the problem starts.'

'Please?' The German turned towards Audley. 'I will keep my word—as a German officer.'

'That's exactly what's worrying me.' Winston rubbed his thigh harder. 'Because that Frenchman wasn't kidding us. He looked at those papers, and he went off the boil about you and he was ready to get back to the main business of shitting us up. But now you say that's all baloney, you never touched the Fuhrer ... so if those cuffs aren't for that—if they're just for screwing the general's daughter, or stealing the PX blind, or something—then like the Frenchman said, which word of honour are you going to stick to if we meet up