Grey Wolves (32 page)

Henderson wasn’t pleased to see that Edith had bought company.

‘He just jumped on the cart,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a total brat. There was
nothing
I could do.’

‘OK,’ Henderson said, giving Edith a wink before looking up at Jean-Paul. ‘I could do with an extra pair of hands actually. If I give you three francs, will you help me to unload the cart?’

Jean-Paul beamed like it was Christmas and his birthday in one, but then looked perplexed.

‘The cart’s empty.’

Rosie had already jumped into the back of the cart. After a quick glance to make sure that the street was deserted, she pushed a metal lever into a gap between the floor and side of the cart and pulled out a narrow plank. She then reached through the resulting slot and removed two wooden bolts. As Rosie jumped down, Edith stood behind the cart and slid the floor out revealing a large hidden compartment twenty centimetres deep.

Jean-Paul’s eyes bulged as he saw the array of grenades, pistols, machine guns, ropes, detonators, dinner-plate-sized cakes of explosive and black British army commando uniforms.

‘Start carrying,’ Henderson ordered.

Rosie reached over the side of the cart and gave Jean-Paul a wooden box filled with grenades. ‘Put it inside, quickly.’

They rushed back and forth, carrying the boxes of equipment into the house. Luc joined in, after apologising because he’d been out the back peeing. In two minutes the cart was empty and Rosie had the false floor bolted back into place. At this point Edith was supposed to have ridden off, but Jean-Paul had complicated matters.

‘Everyone inside,’ Henderson ordered, then pointed at Edith. ‘Tell me about your little friend.’

‘He’s just a kid,’ Edith said. ‘He’s always out on the street. His family’s rough and he’s got more siblings than toes.’

‘I can keep my mouth shut,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘I swear.’

‘He’s seen all our faces,’ Luc said, as he sneered at Jean-Paul. ‘Safest thing is to wring his neck.’

‘Luc, shut up,’ Rosie said, as Jean-Paul started to look scared.

Everyone was looking to Henderson for answers, but none were popping into his head.

‘We’ve got to kill him,’ Luc insisted. ‘
We’re
all leaving but Edith isn’t and that brat will know she brought the cart here.’

‘I’m not murdering a young boy, Luc,’ Henderson yelled, then looked at Jean-Paul, who backed nervously up to a crumbling wall. ‘Why do you stay out on the street so much?’

Jean-Paul shrugged. ‘Dunno, there’s never much to do.’

‘Their mum’s always drunk and the bloke she’s with knocks all the kids around,’ Edith said.

‘She’s not
always
drunk,’ Jean-Paul said defensively.

Jean-Paul flinched as Henderson moved closer and looked at finger-shaped bruises where someone had grabbed him around the neck, and scars down his arms where he’d been regularly thrashed with a branch or a length of wire. Trusting him was a risk, but Henderson thought a boy with a hard background would respond to kindness.

‘OK, here’s what you do,’ Henderson said. ‘Jean-Paul, are you listening?’

Jean-Paul nodded solemnly, as Henderson glanced at his watch.

‘Rosie is going to take you back to the stables with Edith and the cart. When you get there, she’ll give you two pills that will make you sleep until the morning. When you wake up tomorrow, Edith will give you ten francs. But if you
ever
mention what you just saw to anyone, I’ll send Luc after you.’

‘Ten francs!’ Jean-Paul grinned.

Edith eyeballed him. ‘Swear on your life, Jean-Paul.’

‘I swear on a
stack
of bibles,’ Jean-Paul said, still grinning at the thought of ten francs.

Henderson took Rosie to one side. ‘You’ve got plenty of time. Those pills react differently with different people, so tie the boy up just in case.’

‘Gotcha,’ Rosie said.

‘Take Jean-Paul out to the cart,’ Henderson told Rosie, ‘I need a private word with Edith.’

Edith expected a telling-off, but instead Henderson went down on one knee and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘I wish you’d accepted my offer to come back to Britain and train with us,’ he said, as he took his wallet out of his coat and passed over two ten-franc notes. ‘The other one’s for you.’

Edith shook her head determinedly. ‘I’d never leave my horses,’ she said. ‘Whoever took over would probably send old Dot off to the knackers’ yard within the week.’

Henderson smiled. ‘Have a word with Madame Mercier and tell her to find Jean-Paul a little job. I’d rather he was kept busy than out on the street tempted to tell his little friends tall stories.’

‘I think we’re OK,’ Edith said. ‘Jean-Paul is a bullshitter. Even if he does announce that he saw a cartload of guns nobody will believe him.’

*

‘I tied his wrists and ankles and laid him out on a couple of hay bales,’ Rosie said when she got back. ‘He’s sleeping like a baby and Edith’s going straight over to speak with Madame Mercier about fixing up a job.’

‘Still say we should have wrung his neck to be on the safe side,’ Luc teased.

‘I’ll wring
your
neck in a minute,’ Henderson said.

Joel had arrived ten minutes earlier after finishing work and meeting up with Antoine along the way. Henderson wanted Antoine to take part in the operation then travel back to Britain with them, where he could undergo full espionage training. If all went well, he’d return to Lorient in six to eight months’ time as a fully trained agent.

For now though nineteen-year-old Antoine had to be shown the basics. As Henderson and Luc checked, assembled and prepared all the equipment, Rosie took Antoine through aiming, firing and reloading an automatic pistol and throwing a hand grenade. Most important for tonight, she showed him how to insert an explosive fuse into plastic and explained the differences between the three kinds of fuses they’d use in the operation.

When this was done they took a break to eat dinner. Luc and Henderson wolfed down bread, tomatoes, salad potatoes and sausage. Joel, Rosie and Antoine felt varying degrees of nerves and didn’t have much appetite.

When they were done, Henderson got off the floorboards and looked at his watch for the two hundredth time that day. It was past eight, and just starting to get dark.

‘Have you all memorised your tasks?’ Henderson asked. ‘Including secondary tasks you need to perform if one of us is killed during the operation?’

‘What if more than one of us is killed?’ Antoine asked.

‘Cross your fingers and run like hell,’ Joel suggested cheekily.

Henderson laughed. ‘I always say the same thing: the only certainty in an undercover operation is that nothing will go as planned. But clear heads and common sense should get us through.’

‘Unless we all get shot,’ Rosie said cheerfully.

‘It’s time to say goodbye to our identities,’ Henderson said. ‘From this moment forwards, we’re an Anglo-French commando unit. I hope you’ve all memorised your new identities and background stories. Luc, where did you train?’

‘Gosport army barracks,’ Luc said.

‘What’s your rank and date of birth?’

‘Private second class, Jean-Marc Clemence, Free French Army, born 16 January 1924.’

Joel laughed. ‘You’ll never pass for seventeen. You haven’t even got pubes yet.’

Luc responded by pulling down the front of his trousers, showing the mass of frizzy hair around his crotch. Rosie pretended to retch.

Joel and Antoine laughed, but Henderson’s attempt at staying friendly with Luc hadn’t lasted and he smacked him hard around the back of the head.

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Henderson said. ‘There are ladies present.’

‘You’ve seen my man meat before, haven’t you, Rosie pops?’ Luc said, as he leered at her.

Rosie smiled mischievously. ‘I had to squint pretty hard, but I believe there was a small worm-like object in there amidst the grime and lice.’

‘OK, stop pissing about and start preparing,’ Henderson said irritably. ‘I need your old documents,
now
.’

They threw the identity cards, ration papers, zone passes and all the other paraphernalia that enabled them to move through German checkpoints on to a metal tray which had previously held their dinner. Henderson tore the documents into small squares and splashed them with lighter fuel. As he was about to light them everyone dived away from the windows as three boys belted past the front of the house, running at top speed down the deserted street, pursued by a Kriegsmarine police officer.

After a pause, Henderson set the documents on fire, stirring them with the end of a pen to ensure every piece was thoroughly burned. While he did this, Rosie handed out waterproof pouches and there was some excitement because each one contained items of significant value.

First off there were papers, British military documents, sets of dog tags and French paperwork.

‘These papers are piss poor,’ Luc said, as he studied his new French identity document. ‘Why are we using this crap when there’s a stack of blank originals at the safe house?’

Henderson gave a wry smile. ‘Because we’re likely to be captured or killed with these documents on us and we don’t want the Germans to know that we have access to originals.’

‘But this won’t do us a lot of good if we get stranded and need to go through a checkpoint,’ Joel said.

Luc reacted with typical cynicism. ‘We’re five ordinary scumbags. If we pull this off they’ll probably pin a medal on us, but if we all get killed who’ll miss us?’

It was common for groups to turn on each other when they’re nervous and Henderson wanted it nipped in the bud.

‘That’s enough doom and gloom,’ he said firmly.

The other contents of the pouches were enough to raise spirits. Each one contained high-quality waterproof watches, waterproof lighters, several hundred francs and three gold ingots which could be used as bribes.

‘I synchronised my watch with Captain Warburton aboard
Madeline II
this morning,’ Henderson said. ‘It’s now 8.32 p.m. So wind your watches and set them now.’

The reminder of the time gave everyone a hurry-up, because the aim was to be out of the house by 8.50.

They swapped their French clothing for British army-issue underwear and black commando uniform, then they had a few tense laughs as everyone blackened faces, hands and necks with camouflage make-up.

The final stage was tooling up. They each had an identical backpack full of ammunition, a set of civilian clothes, plus food, water, compass, maps and a basic first aid kit. They wore holsters with silenced 9mm pistols, plus Sten machine guns fitted with bayonets, shoulder belts ringed with grenades, a multi-tool and a jagged-edged hunting-knife.

Luc looked as happy as anyone had ever seen him. ‘I’m gonna kill!’ he said as he thumped his chest proudly. ‘Let me at those German sons of whores.’

He seemed slightly less enthusiastic when he realised that besides the weight of their personal equipment, they had two large equipment bags, each containing more than a hundred kilos of plastic explosives.

Their last act before leaving the house was to push a two-hour time pencil into a small slab of plastic and place it in the middle of the living room, with their clothes and everything else they’d left behind piled around it.

‘We’re two minutes behind,’ Henderson said, as he opened the front door and looked up and down the street. ‘Let’s move out.’

They jogged down the street, with Henderson leading and the others running in pairs taking one handle of an equipment bag. It wouldn’t be completely dark for another forty minutes and they had little cover, but a nine o’clock shift change for the construction workers was the ideal opportunity to penetrate the bunker site.

They had no chance of getting through the strict security around the bunker complex on the eastern side of the dock, so the plan was to penetrate the lightly defended coal yards on the western side and then cross the fifty-metre-wide dock in one of the small motorboats used by harbour patrols.

They were dressed as soldiers now – although their youth and, in one case, sex stretched credibility a little. After months of sneaking around, Rosie felt weird brazenly approaching the security booth at the main entrance of the coal yard. She knocked on the door of a guard hut and tried sounding seductive as the door opened.

‘Hi, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I think I’m lost. I arrived in town this morning and I was trying to find …’

As she spoke, she reached behind her back and signalled with three fingers, indicating the number of men she could see inside.

‘How’d you get that muck all over your face?’ the soldier asked, as four silenced shots pulsed through the small window at the rear of the hut. As he looked back at two colleagues who’d been shot through the chest and head, Rosie snatched her pistol from its holster, took a backward step and shot him through the heart.

She saw Luc’s smile and thumbs-up through the back window as she stepped into the hut.

‘Clear,’ she said.

She spotted the telephone and cut the cord with her multi-tool. Antoine dragged the dead soldier inside the hut and they closed the door as they left so that the attack wasn’t obvious to anyone passing by.

Meanwhile Henderson had led Antoine and Joel through the main gate and moved across the dockside with his pistol ready. Edith’s best guess was that somewhere between three and five men patrolled the coal yard.

The fourth man got taken unawares as he sat with his legs hanging over the dockside crunching into an apple. After slitting his throat, Henderson dragged him out of sight between two huge pyramids of coal.

The three small patrol boats were moored around a pontoon, accessed by a steep ramp. The first boat Henderson stepped aboard had a hole where the engine was supposed to be. The others came down the ramp with the two heavy bags as Henderson moved to a slightly smaller boat, studied its controls and checked the fuel gauge.

All the watches said 8.59, which meant they’d made up the two minutes they’d lost before leaving the house. As Antoine unwound the mooring ropes and stepped aboard the small patrol craft, a huge klaxon sounded in the bunker complex across the water, signalling a shift change.