Voices on the Wind (15 page)

‘Has Cabrot gone yet?'

‘They're sending an ambulance, Herr Standartenführer.'

‘He's to go home, not the hospital. That's the condition of release. And you know what to do.'

‘Yes, Herr Standartenführer. The whole family will be watched.'

Cabrot was a member of the Resistance. Eilenburg knew it as soon as he walked into the cell. The smell of the man's fear was as pungent as the blood he coughed up on to the dusty floor. Everyone who came to see him would be watched. Free, he'd lead the Gestapo to more conspirators than he could have named.

He gave a second order. All the prisoners were to be held overnight, and the relatives sent home immediately. No questions were to be answered about their welfare. And that was when he heard of the Abwehr interest in Louis Cabrot.

Kate cycled past the pink-washed house. She didn't look at the windows or show any interest in it. She went on to a bend in the road and then jumped off and pushed the machine behind a tree. She waited, but nobody was following her. It was just before five o'clock. Her legs ached from furious pedalling to make up time on the way down from Valbonne. She made her way carefully to the side of the house, checking that the road was empty, and slipped in through the front gate and round to the back door. It was closed and there was no sign of anyone moving inside. She knocked, tried the handle. She was sure a curtain moved in an upper window. She knocked again, more urgently. At last the door opened. It was Pandora, looking anxiously at her from inside. Kate didn't speak. She pushed her way past him and slammed the door shut. Suddenly her heart was racing and she was out of breath.

‘My God,' she said, ‘where's Julie? Where are the others?'

‘The old lady's gone into town for something,' he mumbled. ‘Julie got a message. She's out on a job. Am I glad to see you, Katie. Here, come in and have a drink.'

So friendly and relieved; didn't he know there was a Gestapo hunt going on and the whole town was in a state of alert.…

‘Oh, Pandora,' she said. ‘For Christ's sake!'

He stared at her. ‘What? What's up?'

‘Nothing.' Kate moved past him. ‘I'll have a glass of wine. Come on, let's keep in the back. No,
don't
pull the curtains. It's quite light with the door open!'

‘What's up?' he asked again.

Kate said, ‘Didn't Julie tell you?'

He pulled a face. ‘She just said there was a spot of trouble and she had to take a few messages. She said to stay quiet in here and not go out. They were all jabbering together and I didn't understand a bloody word as usual. What is it? You look done in, Katie.'

‘I'm all right,' she said. The wine was acid. ‘There's more than a spot of trouble, Pandora. A lot of people have been arrested, one of them was that poor fellow with the cough who brought us ashore. If they question him he'll tell them about us. So you and Julie've got to get out of here and come back into the hills with me. And we've got under three hours to make it before the eight o'clock curfew! Did she say where she'd gone? Or when she'd be back?'

He said, ‘No. She did look pretty scared.' He caught hold of Kate's arm. ‘She'll be okay, won't she? I mean, I'll go out and look for her with you.'

‘And be picked up by an SS patrol? No thanks, Pandora. Julie's experienced; she'll take care of herself. Don't worry about that. It's not getting to the pick-up place in time that's worrying me – we'll have to stay here another night and I don't fancy that if they're pulling the poor devil to pieces.'

They were silent after that. Pandora got up and moved round the back room restlessly, hovering near the window. Kate bit her lips not to snap at him to sit down. He was worrying about Julie. Not about himself or Kate or the others. She looked at her watch. It was past six. Pandora saw her do it and said,

‘Look, you go on. Just tell me where we've got to get to and as soon as she comes back we'll follow on. There's no use you hanging around here, Katie, if there's going to be trouble. Push off, will you?'

She shook her head. ‘Ten more minutes. Then we both go.'

He stared at her. ‘Leave without Julie? You must be joking.'

She got up and stood facing him. She was so frightened that she became furiously angry with him. He was so emotionally tied up that he'd lost all sense of security.

‘Listen to me,' she said. ‘You can't speak French; if any German comes up here, you'll blow the whole mission wide open with your first word. Julie could bluff it out, so could I or any of the others. But not you, Pandora. You're the death of the lot of us. If she's not back in the next seven minutes we're going and you're coming with me. I hate to say this, but I'll report you if you refuse. Dulac could have you shot.'

He looked at her with disgust. ‘Here she comes,' he said, and turned his back. Kate didn't waste time; she let Julie in, explained that they were in danger of arrest and bundled them both out of the house.

‘I've got a bicycle,' she told them. ‘Pandora, you'd better take it. Here's where you go to.' She gave brief directions. The way was straightforward: once out of the back roads he would reach the outskirts and turn on to the Promenade. He had to take the fourth turning to the right up to the top of a short hill. Beatrice's grocery shop was half-way down on the right-hand side, on a corner.

‘If she's alone, just say one word: “Dulac”. If she's not, don't speak at all, just wait.'

He tried to argue. Kate felt she could hit him. Julie intervened.

‘Fred, do as she says. Two girls can maybe get a lift. I know another place we can stay if we don't get to the shop on time. But you've
got
to get into the hills. Please, Fred. Please, darling.'

There was no pretence about them now. They embraced and kissed each other, oblivious of Kate.

‘You take care now,' he told her. He set off pedalling strongly; once he looked back.

‘Come on,' Kate said. ‘I don't think we'll get there, but we've got to try.'

On the Promenade there was little or no traffic. Two cars, gas bags wobbling on their roofs, passed them, ignoring the signals to stop. They didn't dare to attract attention by running.

Julie said, ‘We'd better give up; it's twenty to seven. You told Janot not to wait.'

‘I know I did,' Kate answered. ‘But I think he will. Pandora'll see to that! Come on, there's nobody about, let's run from here.'

They had come to the right-hand turning and the street was empty. They ran. Some of the shops had already closed. There was a strange silence; shocked, the people had retreated into their houses. Memories of the arrest and execution of the hostages nearly a year ago drove out the false sense of security. For a long time the conqueror had been lax, the Resistance flourishing in defiance. Now they were afraid again and the windows were shuttered and the doors locked against the unknown. At the top of the hill the girls slowed and began to walk. A few cycled past them, grim-faced; a German staff car, army pennants flying, sped ahead. They reached the corner shop. It was locked and the blinds drawn.

Julie swore in French. She went up and rattled the door handle. Nobody came.

Kate said suddenly, ‘Round the back! That's where Janot parks the van!' And that was where it waited, Janot anxiously tapping both hands on the wheel. The two girls scrambled into the back. Pandora grinned at them in the corner. Janot switched on and the engine croaked and coughed into life and they were on their way. Exhausted, Kate squatted on the bare boards behind the wooden crates. Julie and Pandora were holding hands and murmuring. They were moving slowly, too slowly, she thought in panic. Eight o'clock was the curfew. The patrols would be out and road blocks set up to catch the transgressor. If they stop and search us, that's the end, she decided. All this for nothing. We'll be taken or shot. She opened her bag and slipped the lipstick case into her pocket. She wondered whether Julie and Pandora were also prepared. Without realizing the significance for her, Kate decided that she would ask to be issued with a gun. The sense of being caught unarmed and helpless, with no alternative but suicide, swept all scruples aside. She didn't remember her question to Captain Alfurd when he took her to lunch in London all those months ago. ‘I wouldn't have to kill anybody?' She thought of Louis Cabrot at Gestapo Headquarters and for the first time in her life she began to hate.

‘We got through,' Katharine Alfurd said. ‘When I thought about it afterwards, it was the most rickety, bumbling operation imaginable. Maybe that's why we weren't stopped. Nobody would have dreamed that three Allied agents were hiding behind a few fruit boxes in a van so old it was practically falling to pieces. And luck was with us. No doubt about that.'

‘One always needs luck,' Paul Roulier said. He knew the places she described. He knew the turning off the Promenade that led up a short hill and then down towards a small square. She wouldn't recognize it now. There were smart apartment blocks and fashionable shops. And Germans strolling along the pavements, innocent of old crimes. The new generation in a world that was beginning to forget. Until they brought Christian Eilenburg back to France. ‘The man you call Pierrot,' he said. ‘Where was he while all this was happening?'

The look on her face surprised him. ‘Holed up with his friends in the Abwehr,' she said bitterly. ‘As we afterwards discovered. He wasn't on the run for his life or sweating it out in the Villa Trianon.'

‘You still hate him?'

‘You think I shouldn't? Just because he's dead?'

‘That's not for me to judge, Madame,' Roulier answered. ‘He lived a lot longer than the people he betrayed.'

She got up. ‘I won't be a moment. Please help yourself to a drink.' She went upstairs to her bathroom, Polly, the terrier, trotting after her. She felt overcome with feelings of pain and anger. She looked at herself in the mirror. A woman in her late fifties, younger-looking than her years; the respectable widow of the late Colonel Robert Alfurd, who'd been active in charities and served on the Council.

‘You had the chance once,' she said to the woman in the mirror, ‘you didn't take it. And he got away with it all. You thought he'd be tried and punished and you didn't pull the bloody trigger.' She turned away, snapped out the light and killed her accusing reflection. She was calm when she came back into the sitting room. She smiled at Roulier, saw he had a drink and helped herself. He noticed the composure, he admired the self-control. He couldn't help seeing that her legs were beautiful. Odd how the remains of sex-appeal lingered, like scent on a handkerchief left forgotten in a drawer. She must have been powerfully attractive. A challenge to a man. A challenge that Dulac, the great hero of the Resistance, hadn't been able to resist. And nor had his compatriot, the traitor Pierrot.

‘When did you get an answer from London?' She had slipped away in those few moments. He recalled her gently. ‘Whether to attack the convoy and the power station,' he prompted.

Kate frowned. ‘We didn't get an answer,' she said. ‘We got an instruction. A flat order. The convoy of troops and the German officers it was escorting were not to be touched.'

‘And the power station? That was a very important target, surely?'

‘That was being favourably considered,' she said. ‘You've never seen anyone so furious as Dulac when I passed him that message and he read those exact words.'

He was well enough to get up and come downstairs. His temperature had been normal for twenty-four hours and he was restless and irritable. Ma Mère said that he was doing himself more harm than good by staying in bed. They were gathered in the kitchen when Kate came down with the decoded message from London. Three days of staying inside the house, relying on Janot's daily trips to Nice for news of what was happening.

Louis Cabrot had been sent home. He was seriously ill and his wife didn't know if he would recover. That was good news; Kate and Julie were delighted, Pandora too, when they explained it to him. Only Ma Mère and Dulac were silent; Janot spoke so little he wasn't noticed.

The immediate danger was over. But it was wiser to stay where they were until Dulac was well enough to take control and go back to the town. Eilenburg's new curfew would make movement round Nice more difficult.

Dulac threw the message down. ‘Not to be touched?' He glared at them, not seeing them in his anger. ‘A convoy of German troops and some very senior staff officers and London says they're not to be touched!' He swung round on Kate. ‘You're sure you haven't bungled this?' he demanded. ‘You must have misread them – they wouldn't dare send an answer like this!'

‘I'm afraid they have,' she said. ‘I checked twice. You've asked for their advice and they've given it. If you don't like it, it's not my fault.'

He ignored that. ‘It's not advice,' he said. ‘It's orders. Orders to us, to Frenchmen! You take this down, Cecilie. Take this message and send it off tonight!'

She didn't argue. He wasn't a man to contradict in such a mood. She sat down with pad and pencil. He spoke rapidly, snapping off the words. ‘“Dulac acknowledges London's message. In reprisal for the arrest of eighteen French civilians, the convoy of replacement troops will be engaged. No assistance from London will be needed.” Send that, Cecilie.' He made an effort and added, ‘Please. Ma Mère, I'd like to talk to Janot alone.'

The old woman said, ‘We'll go to the parlour.'

Kate took the pad and went out with them. Julie stopped her. ‘You're not going to send it like that, are you? They'll be furious.'

‘I'm working for Dulac while I'm here,' Kate replied. ‘Not for Baker Street. That's his message and that's what I'm sending. I don't blame him either.' She went on up the stairs to her room.