The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [154]
He leaned into the back of the car and,put a hand on Billy’s chest. “Alive,” he said. “Thank God.”
Billy’s eyes opened.
“It’s all over,” Vandam said.
Billy closed his eyes.
Vandam got into the front seat of the car. “Where’s the gear stick?” he said.
“It broke off. That’s what I hit him with.”
Vandam turned the key. The car jerked. “Good—it’s still in gear,” he said. He pressed the clutch and turned the key again. The engine fired. He eased out the clutch and the car moved forward. He switched off. “We’re mobile,” he said “What a piece of luck.”
“What will we do with Wolff?”
“Put him in the boot.”
Vandam took another look at Billy. He was conscious now, his eyes wide open. “How are you, son?” said Vandam.
“I’m sorry,” Billy said, “but I couldn’t help feeling sick.”
Vandam looked at Elene. “You’ll have to drive,” he said. There were tears in his eyes.
29
THERE WAS THE SUDDEN, TERRIFYING ROAR OF NEARBY AIRCRAFT. ROMMEL glanced up and saw the British bombers approaching low from behind the nearest line of hills: the troops called them “Party Rally” bombers because they flew in the perfect formation of display aircraft at the prewar Nuremberg parades. “Take cover!” Rommel yelled. He ran to a slit trench and dived in.
The noise was so loud it was like silence. Rommel lay with his eyes closed. He had a pain in his stomach. They had sent him a doctor from Germany, but Rommel knew that the only medicine he needed was victory. He had lost a lot of weight: his uniform hung loosely on him now, and his shirt collars seemed too large. His hair was receding rapidly and turning white in places.
Today was September 1, and everything had gone terribly wrong. What had seemed to be the weak point in the Allied defense line was looking more and more like an ambush. The minefields were heavy where they should have been light, the ground beneath had been quicksand where hard going was expected, and the Alam Halfa Ridge, which should have been taken easily, was being mightily defended. Rommel’s strategy was wrong; his intelligence had been wrong; his spy had been wrong.
The bombers passed overhead. Rommel got out of the trench. His aides and officers emerged from cover and gathered around him again. He raised his field glasses and looked out over the desert. Scores of vehicles stood still in the sand, many of them blazing furiously. If the enemy would only charge, Rommel thought, we could fight him. But the Allies sat tight, well dug in, picking off the panzer tanks like fish in a barrel.
It was no good. His forward units were fifteen miles from Alexandria, but they were stuck. Fifteen miles, he thought. Another fifteen miles, and Egypt would have been mine. He looked at the officers around him. As always, their expressions reflected his own: he saw in their faces what they saw in his.
It was defeat.
He knew it was a nightmare, but he could not wake up.
The cell was six feet long by four feet wide, and half of it was taken up by a bed. Beneath the bed was a chamber pot. The walls were of smooth gray stone. A small lightbulb hung from the ceiling by a cord. In one end of the cell was a door. In the other end was a small square window, set just above eye level: through it he could see the bright blue sky.
In his dream he thought: I’ll wake up soon, then it will be all right. I’ll wake up, and there will be a beautiful woman lying beside me on a silk sheet, and I will touch her breasts—and as he thought this he was filled with strong lust—and she will wake up and kiss me, and we will drink champagne ... But he could not quite dream that, and the dream of the prison cell came back. Somewhere nearby a bass drum