Jack Higgins – Night of the Fox

She started U ery. for no reason that made any kind of sense, and Martineau held her tight, wordless in the dark.

T

T. he following day just after noon at Fermanville on the Cherbourg Peninsula, Karl Hagan, the duty sergeant at the central strongpoint of the 15th Coastal Artillery Battery, was leaning on a concrete parapet idly enjoying a cigarette in the pale afternoon sunshine when he observed a black

Mercedes coming up the track. No escort so it couldn’t be anyone important-and then he noticed the pennant fluttering on the bonnet. Too far away to see what it was, but to an old soldier it was enough. He was inside the operations room in a flash, where Captain Reimann, the battery commander, sprawled at his desk, tunic buttons undone, reading a book.

“Someone coming, sir. Looks like top brass to me. Shock inspection perhaps.”

“Right. Klaxon alarm. Get the men to fall in, just in case.”

Reimann buttoned his tunic, buckled his belt and adjusted his cap to a satisfactory angle. As he went out on the redoubt, the Mercedes pulled in below. The driver got out. The first person out was an army major with staff stripes on his pants. The second was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in leather trenchcoat, white scarf knotted carelessly at his neck, desert goggles pulled up above the peak of his cap.

Reimann had never been so shocked in his life and he grabbed at the parapet. At the same moment he heard Sergeant Hagan’s voice and the battery personnel doubled out in the courtyard below. As Reimann hurried down the steps the two battery lieutenants, Scheel and Planck, took up their positions.

Reimann moved forward and remembering what he’d heard of Rommel’s preferences chose the military rather than the Nazi salute. “Herr Field Marshal. You do us a great honor.”

Rommel tapped the end of his field marshal’s baton against the peak of his cap. “Your name?”

“Reimann, Herr Field Marshal.”

“Major Hofer, my aide.”

Hofer said, “The Field Marshal will see everything, including the subsidiary strongpoints. Please lead the way.”

“First, Major, I’ll inspect the troops,” Rommel told him. “An army is only as strong as its weakest point, always remember that.”

“Of course, Herr Field Marshal,” Hofer said.

Rommel moved down the line, stopping here and there to talk to an individual who took his fancy. Finally he turned. “Good turnout. Highly satisfactory. Now we go.”

For the next, hour he tramped the clifftop from one strongpoint to another as Reimann led the way. Radio rooms, men’s quarters, ammunition stores, even the urinals. Nothing escaped his attention.

“Excellent, Reimann,” he told the young artillery officer. “First-rate performance. I’ll endorse your field unit report personally.”

Reimann almost fainted with pleasure. “Herr Field Marshal-what can I say?”

He called the honor guard to attention. Rommel tapped the baton against his cap again and got into the Mercedes. Hofer joined him on the other side, and as the driver drove away, the major checked that the glass partition was closed tight.

“Excellent,” Hofer said. “Have a cigarette. I think you carried that off very well, Berger.”

“Really, Herr Major?” Heini Baum said. “I get the booking then?”

“One more test, I think. Something a little bit more ambitious. Dinner at some officers’ mess, perhaps. Yes, that would be good. Then you’ll be ready for Jersey.”

“Anything you say.” Baum leaned back, inhaling deeply on the cigarette.

“So, back to the field marshal to report,” Konrad Hofer said.

When Sarah and Harry Martineau went into the library at Berkley Hall, Jack Carter was sitting at the table, the maps spread before him.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Brigadier Munro has gone up to London to report to General Eisenhower, but he’ll be back tonight. We’ll both see you off from Hornley Field. Any problems?”

“None that I can think of.” Martineau turned to Sarah. “What about you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Your clothes have all been double-checked for French-ness,” Carter said. “So that’s taken care of. Here are your papers, Sarah. French identity card with photo. German Ausweis, with different photo. Now you know why they asked you to change clothes at the photography session. Ration cards. Oh, and a tobacco ration card.”

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