Henderson's Boys: The Escape (19 page)

‘So what now?’ Marc asked.

‘We’re certainly not doing ourselves any favours by standing around here,’ Henderson said. ‘I’ll pack up everything we need. You go to the bathroom, wipe yourself down and put your shirt back on. There should be some pain killers in the bathroom cabinet if you want them. The Germans have announced an eight o’clock curfew, so we’d better get a move on if we want to make it to the Hotel Etalon without getting pulled up at a road block.’

Henderson reached into the wall cavity and pulled out a small tin. He unscrewed the lid and took out a metal phial barely bigger than his thumbnail.

‘What’s that?’ Marc asked, as Henderson dropped it into his bloody palm.

‘No spy leaves home without one,’ he explained. ‘Cyanide capsule. Put the pill in your mouth and crunch it. You’ll be dead within twenty seconds.’

‘Is it painful?’ Marc asked, as he stared dumbly at the metal pill case.

‘Less painful than being tortured by Oberst Hinze until your heart gives out.’ Henderson shrugged. ‘Look, you don’t have to come with me. I’ll hold nothing against you if you want me to drop you off somewhere instead.’

Marc shook his head determinedly. Henderson struck him as a decent man and for some reason the prospect of the Hotel Etalon and facing the Gestapo scared him far less than the prospect of being dropped on a street corner and left to wander Paris alone.

Charles Henderson didn’t feel great about having Marc alongside him. Before joining the Espionage Research Unit he’d been a naval intelligence officer and their training course gave strict instructions never to use kids. The intelligence manual said that children were physically weak, untrustworthy, unable to handle stress and liable to panic or scream.

But Marc was the only help on offer and Henderson wasn’t ungrateful for it. He’d slept less than ten hours in the past four days. He hadn’t washed or eaten a proper meal and was only keeping himself going with strong black coffee and Benzedrine pills. The worst part was knowing that it wasn’t over. If Henderson made it out of Hotel Etalon alive, he’d still have to break through the German and French lines and somehow get to Tours ahead of Potente, who was already on the road.

Henderson drove a small Fiat and the clock on the dashboard told him it was just a few minutes until the eight o’clock curfew, though at this time in June there was still plenty of daylight. The roads were dead, except for the odd truck packed with German troops. Most cars had left the city crammed with refugees, and the few remaining drivers didn’t want to risk being made into an example by the newly arrived Germans. Everyone had seen newspaper pictures of the corpses hanging from lampposts in Warsaw.

Marc sat in the passenger seat. The mix of adrenaline and whisky made him feel better, and regular beatings at the orphanage had left him with an unusually high pain threshold. He was worried about Henderson though. Sweat poured down the man’s face, his driving was crazy and a couple of times his expression glazed over so badly that Marc thought the car was going to end up ploughing into a wall.

They cruised past Hotel Etalon at just six minutes to eight. The private road leading up to its grand lobby was lined with open-topped Kübelwagens and three of the grand Mercedes saloons used by senior German officers.

‘There’s four regular soldiers guarding the entrance,’ Marc noted, as Henderson turned into a narrow side street and pulled up.

‘I saw them,’ Henderson said warily.

He stepped out of the tiny car and looked up and down the street. ‘We’ve got to get in there before curfew or we’re buggered.’

Henderson took out a duffel bag containing the partially-assembled Sten gun and handed it to Marc.

‘How do we get inside?’ the boy asked, as the weight of the bag practically wrenched his arm from its socket.

‘Every posh hotel has a staff entrance. It’ll be around the back.’

‘But they might be guarding that too,’ Marc said. ‘And if we get in, how the hell are we going to get away again when the whole city is under a curfew?’

‘Good questions,’ Henderson said, as they walked briskly towards the back of the hotel. ‘I’ll let you know the answers just as soon as I think of them.’

A left turn took them on to a concrete ramp, misted with steam curling out of the hotel kitchen and stinking of the rubbish overflowing from giant metal bins. Three kitchen staff stood in an open doorway smoking cigarettes and a bored-looking German guard sat on a step behind them.

‘Act as if we do this every night of our lives,’ Henderson said to Marc, as they approached the door.

‘Evening, gents,’ Henderson said brightly, nodding to the smokers.

They looked a touch mystified, but it was a big hotel and they didn’t know everyone who worked there. The German stretched out his leg to stop them and spoke in bad French.

‘My French not too good,’ Henderson said, pointing jovially towards himself. ‘I night porter. My son is shoe-shine.’

The German didn’t seem happy to have drawn guard duty on his first night in Paris and he looked up miserably and pointed into the kitchen with his thumb. ‘Go ahead.’

Savage heat blasted Marc as he stepped inside. A filthy corridor took them into the hotel kitchen proper, where three men as rough as any Marc had seen leaving the Dormitory Raquel stood in front of a trough, scrubbing massive pots. Another man barged past, carrying a crate filled with empty champagne bottles.

It seemed impossible that anything could be hotter, but as they reached the centre of the kitchen Marc felt as if the sun had crash-landed on his head. It seemed impossible to breathe, let alone work in such heat, but dozens of kitchen staff carted ingredients, chopped, boiled, seared and dragged heavy trays out of ovens.

Marc and Henderson caught a few odd glances, but nobody had time to stop and ask questions. When the waiters passed through the swinging doors leading into the restaurant they were able to glimpse a room filled with black uniforms. At the far end, someone was making a speech to a chorus of drunken laughter.

‘It’s good if they’re pissed,’ Henderson said, smiling as he stepped out of the kitchen into a narrow corridor with great clumps of mildew growing on the walls. ‘Remember, Marc: confidence is key. Always look like you know where you’re going, even if you haven’t got a clue.’

Marc was scared and felt slightly woozy, but at least the corridor was merely stifling, rather than unbearable. They walked twenty metres until they came to a wooden staircase that went down to the hotel basement. A door at the bottom led them into a room containing two giant washing machines. Beyond the machines a woman worked flat out, stretching white hotel sheets over a steam-press, then taking off the flattened sheets and folding them into neat squares.

She stared oddly at Marc and Henderson. Clearly she didn’t get many visitors.

‘Hello,’ Henderson said. ‘We just started work here. I’m supposed to unblock a toilet for someone called Mannstein.’

The woman raised a single eyebrow. ‘How the hell does that bring you down here?’

‘I just came along the corridor.’

She looked at Marc. ‘And you’ve brought your son to work?’

‘Shoe-shine,’ Marc said.

‘We’ve never had that before,’ the woman said. ‘Night porter does the shoes when reception is quiet.’

‘They wanted him special,’ Henderson said. ‘All those Germans need their boots cleaned.’

‘Germans,’ the woman said, as she spat on a sheet before folding it. ‘I’ve been having a nice time these last weeks with Paris so quiet. Now they’re turning everything upside down. Threw out all our guests, including residents who’ve lived here for years, then went down to the cellar and dragged up all the best wines and champagne. You can bet they won’t be paying their bills and if I don’t see my wages I’m out of here.’

‘That’s the breaks, I guess,’ Henderson said uncertainly as he turned towards the door. ‘You wouldn’t know how I can find out what room Mannstein’s in would you? I don’t want to go back upstairs and make myself look stupid.’

The woman tutted with contempt, but pointed towards a telephone on the wall. ‘Dial zero, zero for the front desk. They’ll give you his room number.’

As Henderson grabbed the phone, the laundress walked over to a clothes rail and grabbed a set of pressed overalls. ‘You’d better put them on,’ she said. ‘If the floor manager catches you in a public area without a uniform he’ll go spare.’

Then the woman looked at Marc. ‘We’ve never had a boy shoe-shine before. The only thing I’ve got that will fit you is a messenger’s uniform. But don’t go getting polish on it because it’ll never come out of white cuffs.’

‘Thank you.’ Marc nodded to her as he grabbed the hanger. His uniform comprised a white shirt, black trousers and a velvet waistcoat with gold buttons.

‘Very fetching,’ Henderson teased, as they stepped back into the corridor.

‘Did you get the room number from reception?’ Marc asked.

‘Six-one-two,’ Henderson replied. ‘Now we need somewhere to put these clothes on.’

They headed back upstairs and passed a janitor’s cupboard that was big enough to change in. Henderson closed the door behind them, switched on the light and unzipped the bag, taking out the compact machine gun and showing Marc how to take off the safety catch, fire and reload. On the way out, he grabbed a mop, plunger and bucket.

‘Now we’ve got to find the lift.’

The staff area on the ground floor was a warren and it took several anxious minutes of wandering badly-lit corridors until they found themselves near the hotel’s reception desk with the main elevators facing directly towards them.

Several Gestapo officers were returning to their rooms. The lift stopped at the second and fifth floors and on each the departing officers were saluted by two German infantrymen on guard duty.

‘Seems they’ve got this place sealed up pretty tight,’ Henderson said.

They were alone for the final ride to the top floor and Henderson used the opportunity to check that his silenced pistol was ready to fire.

‘You sure you’re OK with the machine gun?’ Henderson said. ‘Remember to hold it exactly how I showed you or you’ll rip your shoulder off.’

The two guards stepped forwards as the lift doors opened. ‘State your purpose,’ one guard said, in truly awful French.

Henderson began to mumble a convoluted explanation about blocked pipes in room 612 and how the messenger boy’s little arms would be needed to reach behind a sink and undo a valve. Of course, the Germans didn’t understand a word.

‘Blocked toilet,’ the German said irritably. ‘That’s all you need to tell me.’

Henderson nodded apologetically as he walked off with Marc in tow. But after a few steps he realised he’d gone the wrong way and he turned around. Once they’d passed the guards again, one spoke to the other in German.

‘Useless bloody French,’ he sneered. ‘Too much wine. It’s no wonder they lost the bloody war.’

Henderson and Marc both thought it best to pretend that they hadn’t understood and carried on towards Mannstein’s room. Fortunately there were several turns in the corridor and two sets of fire doors.

‘As soon as Mannstein opens the door I’m going to shoot him in the face,’ Henderson said. ‘Stand well back unless you want to get splattered in blood.’

‘Right.’ Marc nodded, taking a deep breath as he poised his knuckles in front of the door. Henderson dropped his bucket and mop and pulled the silenced pistol.

Marc knocked and waited.

‘Who is it?’ a German said.

‘Messenger boy,’ Marc shouted.

Henderson panicked. ‘That’s not Mannstein,’ he gasped.

Marc didn’t have time to ask what to do as a Gestapo officer opened the door. ‘Message from Oberst Hinze—’ he began.

But before Marc knew it, Henderson had fired his shot and a mist of the officer’s blood had spattered his face. Marc was stunned as Henderson burst into the room, just in time to hear Mannstein cry out and run for the bathroom. The bolt slid across the door a second before Henderson barged into it.

‘I just want to talk, Mr Mannstein,’ Henderson lied. ‘It’s not too late. I can still get you out of France.’

Inside the bathroom, Mannstein was going frantic. Banging against the wall, stamping on the floor and screaming for help. He wasn’t a fool and he knew Henderson wasn’t here to talk.

‘Machine gun,’ Henderson shouted, pointing towards the bag.

Marc handed the gun over and Henderson stepped away from the door and let rip. The bullets shredded the door. Henderson used his fist to punch through a large hole and then aimed directly at Mannstein, who’d taken shelter by lying flat in the bath.

A second blast from the Sten gun turned him into red goo, but Mannstein’s cries and the gunfire had been heard by the guards down the corridor and by several Gestapo officers in their rooms.

The first black uniform came out of the room directly across the corridor. Marc dived to the floor as the officer took aim with his pistol, but Henderson spun around and annihilated him with the machine gun.

‘Shit,’ Henderson howled. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

‘Never mind shit,’ Marc said, as he grabbed the pistol from the dead German’s hand. ‘What do we do?’