as Rosie came into the room, conspicuously not holding a cleaver. She suspected the suggestion was a scare tactic, but with Henderson you could never be sure.
‘Just say the word, sweetheart,’ Henderson said. ‘If you want him dead, he’s dead.’
Rosie put her hands over her face and shook her head. ‘There’s enough death in the world right now,’ she said. ‘Take him out somewhere and make sure that I never have to see him again.’
Henderson crouched down and loomed over Dumont. ‘On your feet,’ he growled. ‘You’re damned lucky Rosie’s a better person than I am.’
19:07 Dunkirk
Marc had warned Eugene and PT about the desolation around Dunkirk, but nothing prepared either of them for mounds of debris and swarms of rats scuttling out on to the road in front of them.
The port complex was more than ten times the size of Calais, centred on vast twin harbours, the largest of which was more than two kilometres wide. The eastern harbour was more modest, but both fed into a huge network of canals and docks.
In Boulogne and Calais it was a question of lighting a beacon that would provide a focus for bombing the entire dockyard. Although more than five hundred tugs and barges had been refurbished and docked around Dunkirk, having them spread along more than twenty kilometres of canals and docks made precise targeting impossible.
But Marc had identified two high value targets in the canal leading from the eastern harbour. The first was the huge dry dock where most barge conversions were done. The second was a nearby canal where the Germans had built a refuelling station and kept more than twenty fast patrol boats, carefully disguised amidst the remains of the Dunkirk fishing fleet.
The Royal Navy had the English Channel blockaded at both ends, preventing the German Navy from bringing in any large surface ships. This meant that defence of the invasion fleet would rely upon submarines and these lightly armoured patrol boats. A successful bombing of the patrol-boat base at Dunkirk would destroy a quarter of the German fleet in one swoop.
PT and Eugene’s starting point was a dockside camp, comprising twenty large wooden barrack huts which housed both skilled French workers and much of the local German garrison.
The Germans paid good wages in this area and even though the barge conversion programme was nearing its end, skilled Frenchmen were still coming in to undertake rebuilding works around the docks.
‘Recruitment office is closed till morning,’ a German guard explained as the Renault truck stood at a security gate. He gave Eugene’s travel permits the briefest of inspections before continuing, ‘You can bunk in one of the French huts if you can find a bed. You’ll get a meal in the bar. What’s inside the truck?’
Eugene shrugged. ‘Just my little brother and a bunch of tools. Search it if you want.’
The back of the truck was full of explosives, but Marc said the Germans never searched vehicles entering the barracks, only the nearby docks.
Eugene rolled through the checkpoint and drove a couple of hundred metres to the only place in town that had any life coming out of it.
PT led Eugene inside and found the narrow space crammed with Germans, who all went spookily quiet. One man even pulled a pistol.
‘French in hut eight, up the other end,’ a man sitting near the door explained.
They backed out nervously and found the bar where the French workmen socialised. The Germans ensured that there was plenty of food and booze for these valuable workers, who crammed the bar and spilled outside, sitting on chunks of dockside rubble and lining up to piss into a nearby canal.
The only women inside stood by a piano – one playing badly, one singing badly but compensating for it by being beautiful and topless. It took Eugene an age to reach the bar, where he bought two bottles of German beer and enquired after a man named Wimund.
‘Somewhere down the far end,’ the sweat-streaked barman answered, as Eugene paid.
Marc had described Wimund as a stocky man with a balding grey head who always wore a blue overall, but that could have been any of thirty workmen. Eugene grew anxious and considered switching to a less effective fall-back plan, after they’d spent more than fifteen minutes squeezing between bodies and asking questions.
They were about to give up when PT got touched on the shoulder.
‘You the boy that’s looking for me?’ Wimund asked.
Eugene smiled warmly. ‘You know my little cousin, Marc?’
Wimund had downed plenty of booze. His