Jackdaws (5 page)

There was a noise behind him,
startling him. He spun around. When he saw what was in the doorway he took a
frightened step back. "Christ!" he said. He was looking at a squat
figure, its face thrown into shadow by the strong light from the next room.
"Who are you?" he said, and he could hear the fear in his own voice.

The figure stepped into the light
and turned into a man in the uniform shirt of a Gestapo sergeant. He was short
and pudgy, with a fleshy face and ash-blond hair cropped so short that he
looked bald. "What are you doing here?" he said in a Frankfurt
accent.

Dieter recovered his composure. The
torture chamber had unnerved him, but he regained his habitual tone of
authority and said, "I am Major Franck. Your name?"

The sergeant became deferential at
once. "Becker, sir, at your service."

"Get the prisoners down here as
soon as possible, Becker," said Dieter. "Those who can walk should be
brought immediately, the others when they have been seen by a doctor."

"Very good, Major."

Becker went away. Dieter returned to
the interview room and sat in the hard chair. He wondered how much information
he would get out of the prisoners. Their knowledge might be limited to their
own town. If his luck was bad, and their security good, each individual might
know only a little about what went on in their own circuit. On the other hand,
there was no such thing as perfect security. A few individuals inevitably amassed
a wide knowledge of their own and other Resistance circuits. His dream was that
one circuit might lead him to another in a chain, and he might be able to
inflict enormous damage on the Resistance in the weeks remaining before the
Allied invasion.

He heard footsteps in the corridor
and looked out. The prisoners were being brought in. The first was the woman
who had concealed a Sten gun beneath her coat.

Dieter was pleased. It was so useful
to have a woman among the prisoners. Under interrogation, women could be as
tough as men, but often the way to make a man talk was to beat a woman in front
of him. This one was tall and sexy, which was all the better. She seemed to be
uninjured. Dieter held up a hand to the soldier escorting her and spoke to the
woman in French. "What is your name?" he said in a friendly tone.

She looked at him with haughty eyes.
"Why should I tell you?"

He shrugged. This level of
opposition was easy to overcome. He used an answer that had served him well a
hundred times. "Your relatives may inquire whether you are in custody. If
we know your name, we may tell them."

"I am Geneviève Delys."

"A beautiful name for a
beautiful woman." He waved her on.

Next came a man in his sixties,
bleeding from a head injury and limping too. Dieter said, "You're a little
old for this sort of thing, aren't you?"

The man looked proud. "I set
the charges," he said defiantly.

"Name?"

"Gaston Lefvre."

"Just remember one thing,
Gaston," Dieter said in a kindly voice. "The pain lasts as long as
you choose. When you decide to end it, it will stop."

Fear came into the man's eyes as he
contemplated what faced him.

Dieter nodded, satisfied.
"Carry on."

A youngster was next, no more than
seventeen, Dieter guessed, a good-looking boy who was absolutely terrified.
"Name?"

He hesitated, seeming dazed by
shock. After thinking, he said, "Bertrand Bisset."

"Good evening, Bertrand,"
Dieter said pleasantly. "Welcome to Hell."

The boy looked as if he had been slapped.

Dieter pushed him on.

Willi Weber appeared, with Becker
pacing behind him like a dangerous dog on a chain. "How did you get in
here?" Weber said rudely to Dieter.

"I walked in," Dieter
said. "Your security stinks."

"Ridiculous! You've just seen
us beat off a major attack!"

"By a dozen men and some
girls!"

"We defeated them, that's all
that counts."

"Think about it, Willi,"
Dieter said reasonably. "They were able to assemble close by, quite
unnoticed by you, then force their way into the grounds and kill at least six
good German soldiers. I suspect the only reason you defeated them was that they
had underestimated the numbers against them. And I entered this basement
unchallenged because the guard had left his post."

"He's a brave German, he wanted
to join the fighting."

"God give me strength,"
Dieter said in despair. "A soldier in battle doesn't leave his post to
join the fighting, he follows orders!"

"I don't need a lecture from
you on military discipline."

Dieter gave up, for now. "And I
have no desire to give one."

"What do you want?"

"I'm going to interview the
prisoners."

"That's the Gestapo's
job."

"Don't be idiotic. Field
Marshal Rommel has asked me, not the Gestapo, to limit the capacity of the
Resistance to damage his communications in the event of an invasion. These
prisoners can give me priceless information. I intend to question them."

"Not while they're in my
custody," Weber said stubbornly. "I shall interrogate them myself and
send the results to the Field Marshal."

"The Allies are probably going
to invade this summer—isn't it time to stop fighting turf wars?"

"It is never time to abandon
efficient organization."

Dieter could have screamed. In
desperation, he swallowed his pride and tried for a compromise. "Let's
interrogate them together."

Weber smiled, sensing victory
"Absolutely not."

"This means I'll have to go
over your head."

"If you can."

"Of course I can. All you will
achieve is a delay."

"So you say."

"You damned fool," Dieter
said savagely. "God preserve the fatherland from patriots such as
you." He turned on his heel and stalked out.

CHAPTER

FIVE

GILBERTE AND FLICK left the town of
Sainte-Cécile behind, heading for the city of Reims on a country back road.
Gilberte drove as fast as she could along the narrow lane. Flick's eyes
apprehensively raked the road ahead. It rose and fell over low hills and wound
through vineyards as it made its leisurely way from village to village. Their
progress was slowed by many crossroads, but the number of junctions made it
impossible for the Gestapo to block every route away from Sainte-Cécile. All
the same, Flick gnawed her lip, worrying about the chance of being stopped at
random by a patrol. She could not explain away a man in the backseat bleeding
from a bullet wound.

Thinking ahead, she realized she
could not take Michel to his home. After France surrendered in 1940, and Michel
was demobilized, he had not returned to his lectureship at the Sorbonne but had
come back to his hometown, to be deputy head of a high school, and—his real
motive—to organize a Resistance circuit. He had moved into the home of his late
parents, a charming town house near the cathedral. But, Flick decided, he could
not go there now. It was known to too many people. Although Resistance members
often did not know one another's addresses—for the sake of security, they
revealed them only if necessary for a delivery or rendezvous—Michel was leader,
and most people knew where he lived.

Back in Sainte-Cécile, some of the
team must have been taken alive. Before long they would be under interrogation.
Unlike British agents, the French Resistance did not carry suicide pills. The
only reliable rule of interrogation was that everybody would talk in the long
run. Sometimes the Gestapo ran out of patience, and sometimes they killed their
subjects by over enthusiasm but, if they were careful and determined, they
could make the strongest personality betray his or her dearest comrades. No one
could bear agony forever.

So Flick had to treat Michel's house
as known to the enemy. Where could she take him instead?

"How is he?" said Gilberte
anxiously.

Flick glanced into the backseat. His
eyes were closed, but he was breathing normally. He had fallen into a sleep,
the best thing for him. She looked at him fondly. He needed someone to take
care of him, at least for a day or two. She turned to Gilberte. Young and
single, she was probably still with her parents. "Where do you live?"
Flick asked her.

"On the outskirts of town, on
the Route de Cernay."

"On your own?"

For some reason, Gilberte looked
scared. "Yes, of course on my own."

"A house, an apartment, a
bedsitting room?"

"An apartment, two rooms."

"We'll go there."

"No!"

"Why not? Are you scared?"

She looked injured. "No, not
scared."

"What, then?"

"I don't trust the
neighbors."

"Is there a back
entrance?"

Reluctantly, Gilberte said,
"Yes, an alley that runs along the side of a little factory."

"It sounds ideal."

"Okay, you're right, we should
go to my place. I just… You surprised me, that's all."

"I'm sorry."

Flick was scheduled to return to
London tonight. She was to rendezvous with a plane in a meadow outside the
village of Chatelle, five miles north of Reims. She wondered if the plane would
make it. Navigating by the stars, it was extraordinarily difficult to find a
specific field near a small village. Pilots often went astray—in fact, it was a
miracle they ever arrived where they were supposed to. She looked at the
weather. A clear sky was darkening to the deep blue of evening. There would be
moonlight, provided the weather held.

If not tonight, then tomorrow, she
thought, as always.

Her mind went to the comrades she
had left behind. Was young Bertrand dead or alive? What about Geneviève? They
might be better off dead. Alive, they faced the agony of torture. Flick's heart
seemed to convulse with grief as she thought again that she had led them to
defeat. Bertrand had a crush on her, she guessed. He was young enough to feel
guilty about secretly loving the wife of his commander. She wished she had
ordered him to stay at home. It would have made no difference to the outcome,
and he would have remained a bright, likable youth for a little longer, instead
of a corpse, or worse.

No one could succeed every time, and
war meant that when leaders failed, people died. It was a hard fact, but still
she cast about for consolation. She longed for a way to make sure their
suffering was not in vain. Perhaps she could build on their sacrifice and get
some kind of victory out of it after all.

She thought about the pass she had
stolen from Antoinette and the possibility of getting into the château
clandestinely. A team could enter disguised as civilian employees. She swiftly
dismissed the idea of having them pose as telephone operators: it was a skilled
job that took time to learn. But anyone could use a broom.

Would the Germans notice if the
cleaners were strangers? They probably paid no attention to the women who
mopped the floor. What about the French telephonists—would they give the game
away? it might be a risk worth taking.

SOE had a remarkable forgery
department that could copy any kind of document, sometimes even making their
own paper to match the original, in a couple of days. They could soon produce
counterfeits of Antoinette's pass.

Flick suffered a guilty pang at
having stolen it. At this moment, Antoinette might be looking for it
frantically, searching under the couch and in all her pockets, going out into
the courtyard with a flashlight. When she told the Gestapo she had lost it, she
would be in trouble. But in the end they would just give her a replacement. And
this way she was not guilty of helping the Resistance. If interrogated, she
could steadfastly maintain that she had mislaid it, for she believed that to be
the truth. Besides, Flick thought grimly, if she had asked permission to borrow
the thing, Antoinette might have said no.

Of course, there was one major snag
with this plan. All the cleaners were women. The Resistance team that went in
disguised as cleaners would have to be all-female.

But then, Flick thought, why not?

They were entering the suburbs of
Reims. It was dark when Gilberte pulled up near a low industrial building
surrounded by a high wire fence. She killed the engine. Flick spoke sharply to
Michel. "Wake up! We have to get you indoors." He groaned. "We
must be quick," she added. "We're breaking the curfew."

The two women got him out of the
car. Gilberte pointed to the narrow alley that led along the back of the
factory. Michel put his arms over their shoulders, and they helped him along
the alley. Gilberte opened a door in a wall that led to the backyard of a small
apartment building. They crossed the yard and went in through a back door.

It was a block of cheap flats with
five floors and no lift. Unfortunately, Gilberte's rooms were on the attic
floor. Flick showed her how to make a carrying chair. Crossing their arms, they
linked hands under Michel's thighs and took his weight. He put an arm around
the shoulders of each woman to steady himself. That way they carried him up four
flights. Luckily, they met no one on the stairs.

They were blowing hard by the time
they reached Gilberte's door. They stood Michel on his feet and he managed to
limp inside, where he collapsed into an armchair.

Flick looked around. It was a girl's
place, pretty and neat "and clean. More importantly, it was not
overlooked. That was the advantage of the top floor: no one could see in.
Michel should be safe.

Gilberte fussed about Michel, trying
to make him comfortable with cushions, wiping his face gently with a towel,
offering him aspirins. She was tender but impractical, as Antoinette had been.
Michel had that effect on women, though not on Flick—which was partly why he
had fallen for her: he could not resist a challenge. "You need a
doctor," Flick said brusquely. "What about Claude Bouler? He used to
help us, but last time I spoke to him, he didn't want to know me. I thought he
was going to run away, he was so nervous."