The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

what your command structure tried to do.”
    He splashed some red wine into the tourain that remained in his soup bowl, brought the bowl to his mouth with both hands, and slurped it down. Manners noticed that the wine was a Léoville ’38.
    “We call that faire chabrol, finishing the soup the way the peasants do it. Try it, Englishman!” He pulled out his pistol, and hammered the butt on the table. “Hey, boys,” he shouted. “I’m teaching Winston Churchill’s man to faire chabrol . When we’ve killed all the Boches, we’ll go over to London and teach Churchill himself, eh?”
    “We’re going to Spain first,” shouted a swarthy-looking desperado in a heavy Spanish accent. “First we settle Hitler, then we settle Franco. We’ll faire chabrol with Franco’s blood.”
    Manners had heard a lot of this. Many of the Maquis were Spaniards who had fled from Franco’s victory, most of them Communists, and somehow were quite convinced that Churchill and Roosevelt would turn their armies south across the Pyrenees as soon as the war in Europe was over. Manners did not have the heart to disabuse them. Just by refusing to let German troops through Spain to take Gibraltar, Franco had earned himself the gratitude of the Allies.
    The Spaniard lumbered to his feet, and with a great cry of “ Arriba España, ” came around to Malrand’s place and lifted him into a powerful embrace. “I salute you, Malrand, for flying with us and fighting with us. We will feast in Madrid, by the steps of Franco’s gallows.”
    Malrand patted the big Spaniard on the back, pushed him back to his place, and sat to attack his foie gras. “Let’s be thankful the Germans didn’t take all of this,” he laughed, and toasted the Spanish refugees across the table. Then he turned and began talking quietly to the man at his right, a neatly dressed older Frenchman with the look of a lawyer, out of place among these burly men with their thick hands.
    “I’ll forgive that Malrand a lot, because of what he did in Spain,” said Marat.
    “What about the work he’s doing now for France?” asked Manners.
    “Oh, that is to be expected. He’s a patriotic French aristocrat, with interests to protect. This summer, with the invasion, you’ll see the entire gentry of France join the Resistance and claim to have been in the underground all along. By the time your Montgomery gets his tanks to Paris, you will find an entire nation of forty million brave resisters, with a few token scapegoats like Pétain and Laval to be put on trial as collaborators. They will be France’s alibi, as we all conveniently forget that in 1940, we had forty million collaborators who were happy to settle for Pétain and a quiet life. My own party went along for a while, because of that damned Nazi-Soviet pact. I’m French enough to admire de Gaulle for standing up in 1940. And Malrand. He picked his side early, I’ll give Malrand that. But to fight for France is in his blood, in his character. Fighting for Spain was not. That’s what makes him an interesting man, and possibly a dangerous one.”
    “He’s dangerous to Germans, that’s for certain. You should have seen him with the Spandau.” The maids stood at their shoulders to serve the trout. Automatically, Manners turned his shoulder to make way for the woman, and noticed that Marat did not. He just continued smoking his pipe, staring quizzically at the Englishman, forcing the maid to wait.
    “Some of the boys tell me Malrand’s a good teacher and a good leader. Almost as good as you, they say.”
    “He’s better than me,” said Manners. “He gets that automatic respect that’s the mark of a natural officer.”
    “That’s a question of his class, and there’ll be no more of that kind of respect when this war’s over. We’ll respect men like you and McPhee, professionals who know what they’re doing, and know it is their duty to pass it on to others.”
    “There won’t be much room for people like me after the war. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll survive it. I’m a professional soldier, Even if I survive this mission, and whatever I have to do in Germany, after Hitler’s finished they’ll send me to Burma to fight the Japanese.”
    “They’ll probably ask you take Indochina back for France.”
    “I do what I’m told, Marat.”
    “So do I, Englishman, but in a different army, for a different cause.” He put down his pipe, sipped his wine, and devoured his fish in four great bites. He