Mac wingate 4, p.6
Mac Wingate 4, page 6
He strode back to the schoolhouse doorway, steeling himself for another exercise in peasant negotiation. Without looking back he went inside. The atmosphere had changed subtly. The candles had been put out and the sunlight was streaming through the windows. After the meal, most of the maquisards had cleared out, leaving just a handful who huddled around the sitting figures of Poppa and his son. Rinucchi was doing most of the talking when Wingate entered, but as the American approached, he abruptly stopped and turned to face him with an easy smile.
“Captain Wingate,” he said, “I trust you are ready to carry out the mission?”
“I was always ready to carry out Granite,” Wingate replied tersely, taking up a standing position on the other side of the long table, his hands folded in front of him.
“Of course,” Rinucchi answered, maintaining his smooth approach. “But you know as well as I that things change very quickly in war. Some targets take priority. This is one such case. I’m sure you know of many others. I have been assured by the Free French that this operation is of the highest possible priority. My instructions were to supply you with anything you might need, then arrange for you to get off the island once the job is finished. Your job is to destroy the train.”
“If I’m going to do that,” Wingate said solemnly, “I’m going to need certain information.”
Rinucchi closed his limpid eyes and sighed, as if catching Wingate with his hand in the cookie jar. “Captain Wingate, yours is not to reason why ...”
“Don’t be stupid!” Wingate snapped to the surprise of everyone there. “I’m not talking about irrelevant information, I’m talking about facts I’ll need if you all want to stay alive afterward and have the job done thoroughly. Believe it or not, Wernzelli, I know what my job is and I know what it takes better than you, your father, and the rest of the partisans put together. So either you start answering my questions straight, or I take my own chances getting off Corsica.”
Wingate was pleased. Rinucchi sputtered for a full five seconds before choking out a reply.
“But ... but Captain Wingate, you must realize that certain information must stay confidential ... for ... for security’s sake.”
“I don’t give a damn about your security,” he answered quietly. “Who am I? Some third-class clerk at the war office? If the Free French told you to get me for this assignment, then you know what I’m about. And I don’t have time for some arrogant peasant play-acting high command. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Wernzelli?”
Wingate watched as Rinucchi’s expression changed from inflated self-confidence to confusion to anger to a shifty reexamination of the situation. He could guess what the fellow was thinking. Rinucchi wanted to feel superior to the American and stay in charge of the Free French mission, so he was trying to find a way around Wingate’s expertise in explosives. By the look that finally settled on his features, he couldn’t find one.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Very clear, Captain Wingate. I am at your service.”
“Fine,” Wingate smiled, maintaining his position on the other side of the table. “First, inform Poppa Wernzelli that I will continue to need his help if this operation is to succeed. By the look on his face, I’d guess he didn’t understand half of what we just said.”
Rinucchi nodded and turned to his suspicious father. After first speaking calmly in their lilting native tongue, the elder Wernzelli replied in shocked and angry tones. Rinucchi answered curtly, pointing toward Wingate. The father then turned to the American himself.
“Granite take over maquisards?” he demanded to know.
“No, Poppa Wernzelli,” Wingate soothed. “Poppa Wernzelli is head of the maquisards. Granite is mission leader. Mission leader needs maquisards help.”
“Oh,” said the old Corsican, nodding. “Mission leader. Oh.” He smiled, back in the saddle again. “Need our help, eh?”
“That’s right,” said Wingate, grinning.
“Granite is our friend,” Poppa said to Rinucchi for Wingate’s benefit. “We help Granite, eh?”
“Yes, Poppa,” the son said quietly. Rinucchi had folded his hands and was looking down at the table. After the affirmation, the old man talked animatedly with the other maquisards, his arms adding punctuation.
“Tell him I need a cabin for my wounded partner and myself,” Wingate instructed Rinucchi. “A sort of command central. I’ll also need paper and some sort of writing instrument.”
“What for?” Rinucchi queried, raising his head. The Corsican suspicion had not been stamped out.
“Math,” Wingate said simply. “Trains don’t fall apart easily. I’ll need to figure out how much explosive to use according to the train’s weight and speed and other factors. I don’t want to set everything off, then discover it wasn’t enough. And I can’t do it all in my head. Understood?”
“Understood,” Rinucchi answered, properly chastised.
“Ask him to arrange those things now,” Wingate suggested. “You and I have to confer alone.”
“All right,” Rinucchi agreed, turning to his father and speaking quickly in the other language. Poppa Wernzelli nodded and stood. He led the other maquisards out with quick, decisive strides.
As soon as the others were completely out of the building, Wingate moved over to Rinucchi’s seat. “Let me see your file.” The young man offered up the manila folder without a word. The American sat in Poppa’s seat and flipped through the meager information on the Corsican train system, all written in Italian. Wingate guessed most of the facts from his limited knowledge of the language and the universal language of numbers and meters.
There was a twenty-five-kilometer stretch of track moving up the northeast coast from Vescovato to the end of the line in Bastia. Unfortunately, it ran parallel to the Col de Teghime—a main roadway. The main railway station was in a section of town called Lupino. It all meant less than nothing in terms of a successful sabotage run. Wingate needed to do a little reconnaissance.
“Where did you get this?” he asked the somber Rinucchi, still flipping through the few pages as if they were interesting.
“In ... in the city files. I’m ... I’m a clerk for the Bastian government.”
Wingate slapped the folder onto the table, the sound making Rinucchi jump. “The government? And they don’t know your connection to the maquisards?”
“No,” he said, looking up. “I use another name. Sampiero Poali. The Germans and Italians call me Sam. No one even suspects.”
“So you know the town.”
“Bastia? Yes, very well.”
Wingate carefully placed his fingertips together and looked slowly around the room. His eyes settled on Thomas’s bed where the wounded man looked as if he were sleeping comfortably. “All right, Rinucchi,” the American suddenly said. “We’ll have to find some peasant clothes for me. You can tell me more on the way to Bastia. Let’s get going.”
It took less than a half an hour to get everything organized. Wingate had changed into the maquisard costume of shirt, vest, pants, and boots culled from a variety of small wardrobes. Rinucchi gave him his own beret to wear. The knife in its scabbard was moved from his waist to under his pant leg and his weapon was switched. The Browning would be a dead giveaway, so a Bodeo revolver was lent. Almost all Corsican men were armed, so the sight of Wingate swaggering around town with a gun in his belt would not be considered unusual.
Wingate left his 9 mm automatic with the comatose Thomas, who was carefully moved from the main building to a small but comfortable cabin off to the right. The maquisards didn’t fool around with stretcher transfers or anything like that—four of them simply grabbed the bed posts and smoothly lifted the entire structure without Thomas missing a snore.
Just before they left, Wingate supervised the moving of the remaining packs. With his strict instructions, the explosives were kept separate from the detonators and Poppa Wernzelli gave him his solemn word nothing would be touched.
“On pain of death,” the old Corsican promised with fire in his eyes. Wingate had little doubt he would keep his word. Wernzelli looked ready to disembowel the first man to even breath on the stuff.
Wingate spent his last moment in the camp with Thomas. The Englishman was sweating, but still sleeping peacefully. He wondered if he should wake him and ask whether he had heard anything, but thought better of it. When he came back, hopefully, Thomas would be much improved. He left the cabin and met Rinucchi in the clearing. Together they moved off into the woods.
Wingate could hardly believe the change that had come over the young man. Like a dog who only had to be punished once, Rinucchi had become soft-spoken, informative, and eager to please. The American imagined that his father had brought him up to respect those who proved worthy of it. Whatever the reason, he no longer had to play a game of “Who’s Boss Here?”
“You have very good timing, Captain Wingate,” the fellow said as they made their way through the forests. “I had planned to be returning about this time in the first place.”
“Oh?” Wingate inquired, keeping an eye on his feet as he slid down a section of shale. “Why’s that?”
“My job in the palace. I have to report to work by mid-morning.”
“The palace?”
“The palace of Genoese governors, it has stood for hundreds of years. It is where the provisional Corsican government is located.”
Wingate moved down the last section of shale and fell in step with the young man. “I see,” he said. “That’s where the Free French contacted you?”
“Oh, no,” the fellow replied. “The palace is like a fortress. In fact, it was a fortress for most of our history. We meet in sections of the maquis, always scouted out and found by my father.”
“You sound pretty careful.”
“We have to be,” Rinucchi admitted, slowing his pace. “The Nazis are very suspicious. And then there’s the Ovra. Do you know the Ovra, Captain Wingate?”
The American shook his head.
“The Italian SS,” the Wernzelli son explained, taking a moment to spit in derision. “The secret police. Pigs!” He spat again.
Wingate pondered the new complication for a moment, noticing that Rinucchi had become vehement for the first time. He was showing signs of being honestly patriotic and hateful of the enemy. The kid had possibilities of becoming human yet, Wingate thought. It was a good time to reintroduce a subject that had been bothering him for a while.
“And there is also the wild-haired woman. The mountain fighter.”
“Oh, yes,” Rinucchi responded earnestly. “The streghi.”
“You honestly believe all that stuff?” Wingate asked in a friendly tone.
Rinucchi shrugged. “I know what I know. She lives up in the mountains alone, eating the nuts and fruits. I have seen the bodies of the maquisards she has killed. She wears the clothes and carries the gun of a Nazi. They say she possesses the bodies of town children to do her bidding. What should I believe, Captain? You tell me she isn’t a traitor to our cause?”
“I’m just worried about the train,” Wingate explained. “I don’t want the maquisards scattering like sheep if she shows up.”
“Do not worry about us,” Rinucchi intoned, turning his head toward Wingate,. “If we see her, we will kill her, and burn her corpse to free the children.”
“Isn’t that a bit extreme?” Wingate retorted, grinning slightly at the superstition.
“Better to respect our beliefs now than to discover their truth too late.”
Wingate chewed on that declaration for a while as they continued down the mountain in silence. They passed through the trees and into the concentrated maquis shrubs. Wingate enjoyed the soft sensation of lived-in cloth against his body. The boots were the right size and well broken in, giving his feet plenty of air and mobility. All he needed to do was narrow his mind and he’d feel positively Corsican.
Rinucchi stopped as they cleared the maquis, then pointed at the nearby cliff edge. “Just walk down around the shoreline off the right to reach Toga—a section on the outskirts of town. Five hundred meters straight down the road and you will come to the Boulevard Paoli, the main strut of Bastia. Then you pass the Palace of Justice, and will come to the Citadelle, the ‘Terra Nova.’ Be very careful there; it is crawling with Ovras. They think it is their own city. A little further down is the railway station and the tracks. You can probably sneak onto a train there to get an idea of the tracks.”
“Where will you be?” Wingate inquired.
“Inside the palace, inside the Citadelle,” the young man replied, “trying to discover the train’s schedule.” With that, Rinucchi began to move off. Wingate hastily grabbed him by the arm.
“You mean you don’t know when this train you want blown up is running?” he seethed through clenched teeth.
“I know it is sometime soon,” the Corsican whined, pulling at the fingers wrapped tightly around his skinny arm. “You will have that information tonight. I promise.” He swiftly pulled his arm out of Wingate’s grip and hurried down a worn path to the left. “Tonight,” he quietly called and waved.
As was usual lately, Wingate didn’t like it. He was alone when he shouldn’t have been, infiltrating a town he didn’t know, passing among people who spoke languages he hadn’t learned, to blow up a train no one knew anything about. It was shaping up to be another great day. Flying blind seemed to be Wingate’s curse throughout the war so far, so he decided to grin and bear it. There was nothing to it but to do it. Mentally shrugging, he moved out to the right, kicking the high grass out of the way.
Minutes later, high grass was not the only thing he wanted to kick. He was longing for Rinucchi Wernzelli’s butt to be in front of him, just about on the level of his waist. Of the many things the Corsican probably hadn’t told him, one was that he would be forging a new path through the wilderness. There was no path, no track, nothing but boulders, bushes, mud, and a seventy-five degree angle straight down. He tore his way along the savage landscape, often falling and rolling as much as running. If he looked like a clean-scrubbed soldier in Corsican clothing when he left the maquisards, he certainly looked like a dirty peasant now.
Taking a moment to rest on a small level section of the incline, Wingate looked toward his right and got his first clear view of Bastia. From what he could see, the outskirts of the town were not unlike many other Mediterranean waterfronts. The buildings were straight, rectangular, and not very tall—their walls showing the steady decay salt water can bring. The only buildings to offer any variety to the skyline were the churches, whose steeples pointed at the clouds in varying degrees of classical design.
Uninspired, Wingate turned his attention back to the hill. Cursing under his breath, he tripped down the rest of the way. Pushing some bushes aside, he stepped out onto the cobble-stoned street of Toga. The lack of activity surprised him. Although the sun was shining and the air was clear, no one was around to enjoy it. Wingate spied a dilapidated fence, a broken wooden cart, and some wash hanging on a line which stretched between two shuttered windows, but other than that, nothing. He figured the majority of the populace had moved into town during the Italian occupation and German retreat.
Wingate moved on. Twenty minutes later, the tightly built town of Bastia had closed in around him and the first signs of active life appeared. He heard quiet voices in mumbled conversation and feet slapping against the street stones. And with the sounds came the smells—the stink of unwashed dogs, the stench of open drains, the smoke of cigarettes, and everywhere the scent of the seawater.
Even before he saw his first citizen, Wingate marveled at the claustrophobic power the town had. Bastia was all steps and arches and high walls. It was a maze he could get lost in for the rest of the day if he weren’t careful. He stayed on the wide, empty main street, even though he heard subdued activity in the enjoining alleyways. He was on a fact-finding mission, not a guided tour.
Wingate turned a corner to discover Bastia’s town square. Its size stopped him in his tracks. It was far bigger than Wingate expected anything Corsican to be, and with far more grandeur. Sadly, the dour, mostly silent people who populated it gave a lie to its majestic design. Street vendors were pleading in low tones to severe men and hunched old women. Open-air cafes lined both sides of the area, with tables hemmed in by strung lights. Only most of the bulbs were broken and the tabletops cracked or dirty.
More peasants sat at these cafes, playing checkers or smoking pipes, all silent, all gazes cast downward. There were no young people to be seen. Wingate figured that most of the boys were probably in the mountains or in armies serving both the Allies and the Axis. Those lucky enough to get off the island may have enlisted with Patton’s or Montgomery’s forces in Sardinia, Sicily, or Africa. Many others were probably pressed into Italian or German service.
The girls, Wingate had no doubt, were inside. Anywhere inside. The mothers must have reacted with abject horror to the influx of soldiers—soldiers who wouldn’t be stopped from looking or talking to girls. The sexual chaos that resulted was still being felt, he imagined. Awakening sexuality probably burst on the scene louder than the German Schmeissers.
Hardly had Wingate finished the thought than he recognized two of those very submachine guns. They were being carried by two Nazi soldiers on the other side of the square. Forgetting his disguise, Wingate pulled himself close to the wall nearest him, keeping an eye on the German pair. Completely oblivious to their surroundings, the duo walked across the square, talking and laughing, either ignoring or not seeing the looks of Corsican hate they got while passing the cafes.
Wingate hoped they would veer off and enter one of the establishments, but the two just kept on coming, moving on a collision course with him. Wingate decided he just couldn’t chance it. He didn’t know what kind of identification system the Nazis or Ovras may have set up and he didn’t want to be singled out or taken by surprise. Quickly looking about, he spotted a dark pathway several steps behind him. Keeping one eye on the approaching soldiers, he backed into the alleyway.
