Madeleine's War by Peter Watson Page A

the night Erich came across an old truck. It was cold and he climbed into the cab for warmth. But the truck was on the lip of a quarry—it had been left there after a landslide had broken away part of the quarry cliff, and was too dangerous to move. The truck had been rusting there for years, abandoned, and the quarry was disused because its walls were unstable. There were warning signs all around, but in the dark Erich didn’t see them. It would only have been a matter of time before the truck fell into the quarry all by itself.”
    Duncan reached for a plate on a side table. “Anyway, Erich’s weight shifted the truck’s balance.”
    The queue moved. We were a little nearer the bacon.
    â€œAs I say, there were signs all around the quarry, indicating the danger, but in the dark Erich simply didn’t see them. Once installed in the cab of the truck, his weight shifted the balance—it tipped over into the quarry, falling down the cliff and causing a landslide.”
    â€œNasty,” said someone.
    â€œYes,” said Duncan, “but although it was the truck that tipped Erich into the quarry in the first place, it was also the truck that saved his life.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œThe windows of the cab were left closed when the truck was abandoned. When it fell, the landslide covered the cab with a mass of stones and rubble and soil but, being metal, the truck withstood the weight, prevented Erich from being crushed
and
ensured that he had plenty of oxygen—for a number of hours anyway. Madeleine saw the back of the truck sticking out of the rubble and heard him shouting.”
    â€œWhere
is
the heroine of the hour?”
    â€œShe’s having a bath, too.”
    â€œWith Erich? She should have some reward,” said someone, and the rest of the queue laughed.
    It was more than three hours since Madeleine had yanked on the rope to indicate that she had found Erich and that he was still alive. I had set off a flare and then circumnavigated the quarry, with Katrine, using her torch and mine, until we found a section where there was a track down to the quarry floor.
    After joining Madeleine, all three of us had shovelled the rubble away with our hands as best we could. In the cold night air we were soon sweating, but, after about an hour, the others had found us. It had taken all eight of us another hour and more to clear away the stones and soil and rubble. Some of the boulders were the size of two or three deer’s heads.
    Just as we were getting close to the cab of the truck, a sound filled the night air and Madeleine shouted, “Watch out!”
    She turned, grabbed Katrine by the arms, and pulled her away. The smell of soil and dust filled my nostrils—another landslide had followed the first.
    The night was dark but the moon was high. I rolled away from the noise just in time and stones and soil fell against my legs but no higher.
    The rushing sound died as quickly as it had arisen.
    I looked around. All the others were safe.
    â€œLet’s get a move on,” I said. “Before there’s a third.”
    We got Erich out and made it back to the Land Rovers without any further mishap. Since Madeleine and Katrine and I were particularly filthy after our exertions, and since Erich needed to be given plenty of space after his ordeal, my “team” climbed into the back of the vehicle, along with all the ropes and tools, where there were wooden benches over the wheels.
    It wasn’t exactly comfortable as the Land Rover began to buck on the winding road and, instinctively, I put my arm around Madeleine.
    She responded by resting her head on my shoulder.
    Almost without thinking, I turned and buried my lips in her hair.
    It smelled of mud.
    Back at the manse, Erich, Madeleine, and I had gone straight into the bathrooms. Craigie had gone off, muttering about it being “time for a treat”—and so here we were, in the queue for a