Blood Game, page 15
“It's what Cate believed.”
The story.
But what was the story, she thought, as they left the village and returned to the roadway. A forbidden affair? A headstrong young woman determined to go after the man she loved? And a secret that James of Montfort, a bastard by birth, had brought back from that ill-fated last Crusade?
History was full of such stories. Like King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, stories handed down but never proven. She brushed the cool metal of the medallion, the raised thistle over the trinity knot in gold.
Faith.
Centuries earlier it had dominated people's lives, giving them something to hold onto, something to believe in and somehow make sense of their world in those early centuries.
Religion had held power—in Rome, the Muslim world, and other cultures. She had studied it in college. In some places, it still held power.
What had the medallion meant to Isa Raveneau? Was it nothing more than a token of lost love? An image she had added to other images in the tapestry?
‘True son,’ Vilette had called James of Montfort. A true son of a father who refused to acknowledge him, a true son who returned from Spain—from that failed last Crusade, with a secret.
Was that the story Cate was after?
A story in a photograph, like hundreds of other photographs taken during the war.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
JUNE 6, 1944, NORMANDY, COAST OF FRANCE
“What is your name, soldier?” Brigadier Lord Lovat demanded as the transport lurched beneath them.
“Private Paul Bennett, sir.”
“Ah, the photographer. Do you have a weapon other than that bloody camera?”
“Yes, sir.” He adjusted the rifle at his shoulder, the camera secured around his neck.
“You're Scot?” Lord Lovat asked.
“Aye, sir. Inverness.”
“Thought as much. Are you any good with that camera?”
“I've had some experience, sir. The Daily Mirror.” He mentioned the London newspaper he'd gotten on with three years before, after submitting those photos—life in the midst of chaos in London, the bombed-out buildings, men, and women huddled in underground rail stations, children on evacuation trains to the English countryside, even one of the young Princess Royal, Elizabeth, in her uniform, a driver for the emergency services.
His contact at the Mirror had given him a doubtful look when he told him that he'd signed on with the military in spite of a boyhood injury that had left him with a limp. He'd laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Have you told your family?”
There were just his mother and sister, safe in Scotland. He nodded. He'd posted the letter just that morning. In twenty-four hours he was on his way. That was all they'd given all of them attached to the press corps, and sworn to secrecy. Everything, the flat he shared with a staff writer, his other equipment, was left as if he were planning on returning at the end of the day. Absolute secrecy was required.
“I went over during the first war, you see,” his editor had told him. “Too old to go this time around.” He was part of the Home Guard.
“Keep your head down lad and keep moving. Did they tell you that rounds always come at you in bursts? Remember that. When they stop, move. And don't stop to think, just keep going.”
He'd thanked him for the advice and swallowed past the tightness in his throat, heading into the unknown.
Twenty-four hours later they were lining up to board the transport under cover of darkness. There had been speculation for weeks about when they might leave, along with the build-up, decoys constructed at bases to throw the Germans off while everything and anything that could float was pressed into service.
He and a young man named Callish, whom he'd taken training with, found themselves assigned to the same transport, along with the 84th.
Lovat grunted now at his response as the French coastline of Calais suddenly appeared through the early morning fog.
“Well this isn't your usual garden party, young man.”
As if to remind them all of that, an explosion rocked the transport off to their starboard, men and bodies thrown into the water—one of the mines they'd been warned about, waiting underwater, one of the German measures against a coastal invasion.
“No, sir,” Paul replied as they swept past, and couldn't help but wonder if the same fate awaited them.
He glanced past Lovat, past the armored vehicle anchored into the bay of the transport, past the specially trained commandoes of the 1st Special Service Brigade, through the clouds of fog and smoke that engulfed the beach ahead.
The landing craft lurched on another wave, churning toward that beachhead and the cliffs beyond. The others aboard, Callish beside him, steadied themselves, expressions grim, waiting, waiting.
What were they thinking, Paul wondered as he took several shots with the 35mm Leica, ironically produced in Germany before the war, that had set him back a couple months’ wages. But it had been worth it. That and the three lenses he purchased just a few weeks earlier—a mark-down sale from a London merchant whose store had been bombed and left in ruins. People weren't buying cameras to take on holiday.
“How old are you?” Lovat asked.
“Twenty-four this past April, sir.”
There'd been no party, no birthday songs, only the blessing from the priest—“May God guide and protect you.” And a bit of stale cake sent weeks earlier from his mother.
“Ah, well, you'll be an old man before this is over,” Lovat added. “We all will be.”
“Aye, sir.”
He already felt like an old man, after living in London since the bombings began in '39, with the air raids, scrambling to get into one of the underground shelters, bodies crammed together...and bodies on the streets. People, just trying to live their lives. And dying. He'd taken pictures of it all—images and scenes that came back in the night in dreams.
Lovat motioned to a man behind him.
“Come along then, William,” he told him. “I want a picture as we go ashore, bloody proof that we made it, you see?”
A man stepped past him and joined Lovat at the bow doors of the landing craft.
“Bloody crazy maniac,” Callish whispered beside him, just out of earshot. “Brings along his own personal piper.”
They were closer now, those around them checking their equipment and weapons one last time, to a man their expressions fixed in what he would later describe as their 'war faces,' and the thought occurred to him as he took another shot with his camera, that it was all the same—centuries apart, but these twentieth-century warriors were much the same as those before them, in other places, other wars, about to step off into the unknown.
“They're called hedgehogs.” Callish pointed out the beach barricades, the Germans line of defense against a sea landing, steel cross-members like jacks in a line along the beach. But this was a deadly toy.
“They say there are mines strapped to each one,” Callish added.
How many would still be alive at the end of the day? Or the next day? Paul wondered.
“Take my picture,” one soldier had told him before leaving Dover, and had given his name—Ian Campbell. A good Scottish name.
“That way they'll be able to identify me if I don't make it back.”
If any of them made it back.
“Make yourself ready,” Lovat told the man beside him. “I want a good rousing piece for the lads.”
Click, click of the camera. Lovat's personal piper pumped up the bag with the pipes secured across his chest.
He made quite a sight, the bagpipes at his chest, the field pack at his back, like a beached turtle, legs and arms sticking out from the ponderous shape, and Paul wondered if he would be able to make it ashore through the churning surf that was as dark and dangerous looking as any he'd seen on holiday on the north coast of Scotland.
The man winked at him as he tuned up the pipes. “Stay with me, lads. If they take a shot at me, it won't make it past this rig I've got on.” He pumped and tuned over the whine of the engines as they rolled toward the beachhead, closer now.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” another man beside them prayed. “Protect us in our hour of need.”
Click, click, click. A half dozen more shots of those around him, faces that needed to be remembered. And then he was stowing the camera in the waterproof pouch. The landing craft lurched and the engines slowed then reversed. Only a hundred yards from that beach now.
“Have a care, lads,” Lovat said one last time.
The bow doors opened, commandoes jostled around them, then moved past, jumping into the rolling surf, then plunging toward the beach. They followed Lovat, his piper right behind him like the Pied Piper.
Bullets exploded all around them, popping on the surface of the water, whizzing past, and the churning surf turned blood red.
“Bloody Christ!” Callish swore beside him as they hit the water, scrabbling for a foothold on the sandy bottom.
Plop, plop, plop. Bullets rained down around them. They kept moving, past a body floating in the surf, then another rolling back toward them on a receding wave. A hand reached up out of the water and Callish instinctively grabbed for it. Just moments before he'd been sharing a cigarette with the man. The body bobbed in the water.
“Leave him!” Paul shouted. “You can't help him now.” He grabbed Callish by the collar and shoved him forward.
They kept moving, stumbling, pushing back to their feet, past another body floating in the surf, sightless eyes staring.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” the man had whispered only moments earlier. Now he was dead.
He counted bursts of rounds that hit the water, then the interval between. Four maybe six seconds.
“Move!” he shouted to Callish, then hit the water just as another burst opened on them. He counted and they were on the move again, clawing their way toward the beach.
Several yards ahead, Lovat with his piper close behind, stormed the beachhead, bullets from machinegun fire in those rocky emplacements beyond the beach popping all around him in a macabre accompaniment to the pipes.
Lying in the sand, the freezing water of the channel washing around him, Paul Bennett took out the camera as others raced past, hit the beach, then died.
It was still Tuesday, June 6, the longest day of all their lives. And for so many, the last day.
He counted again as the rounds whizzed past. Then came the silence between, even as chaos swarmed around them. He used the camera like a weapon, catching the determination, desperation, fear, in their faces, taking cover behind another body as Callish crawled behind him.
One word came to mind—Armageddon.
There were no words spoken as they crawled across the beach, ironically took shelter behind one of those steel hedgehogs the Germans had installed, then lunged ahead, past bodies, then parts of bodies, and followed others as they made for the base of those cliffs with those gun emplacements above. Keep moving, he reminded himself.
They were scattered among the rocks, common soldiers side-by-side with green lieutenants who'd studied war and now found themselves in the midst of something no one could study for.
He suspected there was no book that prepared them for the carnage, looking back at the beach they'd crossed, out across the channel with every boat imaginable deployed, dirigibles hovering overhead, a communication lifeline with a bird's-eye view of those emplacements and the countryside of Normandy that stretched in both directions while aircraft swept over their heads, flying inland, raining death down on a tough, determined enemy.
The enemy.
He hadn't understood it, the ruthless German push into Poland, then Czechoslovakia and a half dozen other countries, and the horror stories that came out of it.
Then the bombings in London. Even then, he didn't understand. Not until he was sent out by the newspaper to capture pictures of the devastation at a school, children's bodies scattered about like dolls, images that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Take your pictures, kid,” a soldier beside him said as he struggled to comprehend man's inhumanity against man.
“Someone has to show what happened here.”
He nodded, because he couldn't speak, his throat raw from the salt water, the smoke, from yelling, from retching his guts out at the sight of a man's head half blown away. His hands shook, but he kept shooting with the camera, barely taking time to focus, catching a shot, then another.
Click, click, click.
“Smoke?” A soldier next to them offered a cigarette.
He didn't but he took one anyone. The accent was pure American, a Yank, his face smudged black.
“They say tomorrow will be worse.”
He glanced back at the surf that rolled in and the bodies that bobbed beside tanks and transports, the channel beyond crowded with tankers and landing craft while Allied aircraft swept overhead. He swallowed past the tightness in his throat.
He took more pictures, because he had to. Would anyone believe this?
They were trapped, exchanging gunfire, trying to find a way up that slope. Then, others were rushing past, commandoes along with Yanks, all clustered together, their units scattered, in a desperate surge to take the bunkers above, success by attrition.
Explosions rocked the hillside, sending rock and shattered concrete down the slope. Then the bunkers were silent except for scattered rifle shots, and they were all moving up that hill.
“Bloody Christ!” Callish swore again as the order went out and they scrabbled up the embankment, trying to get a foothold, swarming like bees to a hive, exposed like targets in a shooting gallery, except they were now doing the shooting.
They reached the summit, and stared at the carnage, the bodies of Germans who'd made a last stand in those bunkers along with those who had charged past them.
“Keep moving! Keep moving!” The order went out as bombers swept overhead.
Their unit was scattered, a handful here, a handful there among Yanks and Canadians. They had no idea where the main body of their unit was, or if it existed any longer.
The view of the beaches below and the channel beyond was organized chaos as waves of infantry continued to wade ashore now accompanied by military armament, trucks, more landing craft, transports with equipment, while farther out in the channel seven thousand ships and other craft off-loaded more equipment.
It was amazing, incredible, and at the same time horrific. He was seeing history through the lens of his camera, loading, shooting, reloading, then reloading again even as they were ordered into a sort of formation. They were headed inland on the heels of retreating Germans.
“They say, we're for St. Malo with the Yanks,” Callish whispered beside him. “One of the lads said they're eager to have the port, but the Germans have been holed up in the city.”
“Where did you hear this?”
Callish shrugged. “Overheard one of the Yanks.”
It made sense. With that many ships offshore, they needed control of the ports—St. Malo, Calais, and others along the French coast.
Callish gestured to a half dozen civilians gathered with the officers.
“French Underground. I overheard them speaking in French.” He shrugged. “My mother made me study the language. The boy says they can get us to St. Malo. They know where all the German roadblocks and checkpoints are. The girl is pretty, once you get past the men's pants and jacket, couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen. What should we do?”
Paul Bennett looked around. There were a handful who wore the same insignia on their sleeves, but the rest of their unit was either down on that beach, or had gone ashore and were someplace else, and there was no sign of their group leader. There had been instructions—if they were separated, join up with the nearest unit until you reach a base camp, then re-group. Staying on that beach below or setting off attempting to find their unit on their own wasn't an option under the current conditions.
“Looks like we're headed for St. Malo.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
PRESENT DAY, THE INTERNET CAFÉ, INVERNESS
The coffee was hot and strong. Innis had lost count how many cups as he scrolled through information, eyes raw from the cigarette smoke, and a gaming crowd that had stayed into the early hours of the morning.
It was always that way on game night, the café jammed with gamers in front of a dozen terminals, playing against each other and an additional unknown number who linked up off-site.
The competition had been intense, players in costumes appropriate to the game they were involved with, others in jeans and t-shirts.
He had Luna decorate the café for game nights, themes that went with the games so that it seemed like the players were stepping into a scene right out of the game—pirates, commandoes, zombies, that sort of thing, with food appropriate to the scenario for the night—skulls made out of French bread loaves with gummy eyeballs hanging out, meatballs in red sauce that looked like eyeballs swimming in blood, and an assortment of para-military gear, all plastic but so authentic looking that he had a visit one night from the authorities about having weapons on the premises.
Bloody cock-suckers! Innis thought. Now they wanted him to pay for a permit on game nights.
“Like bloody hell!” he muttered, with a glance to the entrance as a customer came in.
There was the usual glance around, those themed decorations from the night before still hanging on the walls and from the ceiling, Luna in full makeup of the living dead as she went about gathering paper cups and picking up empty energy drink containers, and an assortment of ash trays overflowing with cigarette butts and the stubs of other home-grown varieties in spite of house rules.
No drugs, not even the medicinal kind. Not that he was into telling other people how to live their lives, but the last thing he needed was the authorities storming the doors and busting his nuts because some little old lady saw or smelled something funny at his shop. He took a swallow, nerves humming as he skimmed through the banking information, financial statements, and other personal information.
