Voices on the Wind (24 page)

Kate said gently, ‘It won't bring back the dead. Risking yourself won't help either of them. You've got to be patient. Think, Jean, try and think who it could be.'

He was dressed, pacing restlessly up and down the bedroom.

‘I've got to find the traitor,' he went on, not listening. ‘While I sit here the Gestapo murders my friends. How many more, Cecilie? How am I to know who else has been betrayed to them?'

She said, ‘Who else knows about this house?'

‘No one,' he retorted. ‘This is the last resort and nobody knows except me. We're safe enough.' He sounded bitter. ‘Let's talk to Julie. Let's go through everyone who could be suspect. I can't sit in idleness. Can't you understand that?'

‘Of course I can,' she answered. ‘I do love you, if that helps at all.'

‘It helps more than you'll ever know,' Jean Dulac said. ‘Kiss me.'

She held out her arms. It was a long kiss, empty of passion. When they separated, Kate slipped her hand into his. All her love for him was in that tender, comforting embrace, and that was what he'd wanted from her. They went downstairs together.

‘Christ,' Pandora muttered. ‘That poor sod and the girl with the baby.' He kept repeating it until Julie lost her temper. She was visibly on edge, unable to sit still for more than a few minutes, chain-smoking.

‘Oh why don't you shut up?' she rounded on him. ‘What's the good of thinking about them? They're gone and that's the end of it – we've got ourselves to worry about!'

They'd gone round in circles, mentioning one name after another, discarding them in turn. At last Dulac said, ‘Julie, you'll have to go to Nice.' Kate saw her face turn white.

‘Me? What for?'

He didn't notice her reaction. ‘I want you to find out if anyone else has been arrested. You're perfectly safe. Poor Janot didn't even know a name for you. In any case you're the only person who can go. They're looking for me, and Cecilie has no contacts. We'll sleep on it for tonight. Tomorrow, you can make a start.' Kate thought in alarm, she's terrified. She shouldn't be sent anywhere if she's that frightened.

She woke in the early hours, shocked and panicking, dreaming she'd had a fall and was still spiralling into the void. And the reason was suddenly clear. The words were a whisper in her mind, becoming a cry of warning. ‘I won't let him sacrifice you.…' Pierrot had got her out of Jean's apartment the very night that Janot was arrested. His determination at the meeting: ‘On grounds of all our safety, I insist that she sends the message from a new locality … I won't let him sacrifice you.' Someone inside the network had betrayed them. Then she checked herself. Pierrot had always objected to her transmitting from the centre of Nice. It was only coincidence again that he suggested she came to Beaulieu with him. Unless he knew that Ma Mère's son would be arrested and the Gestapo would have Jean's name by morning. I should go, she thought. I should go to Beaulieu and face him. Not Julie. Julie's scared to death of doing anything. And Jean mustn't know or he'll stop me.… It was daylight and the curfew would be lifted in an hour. She eased out of the bed, took her clothes and slipped away. The bathroom worked, although water ran red from disuse. Kate washed and dressed, combed her hair and found the deadly lipstick that concealed her safeguard against capture. She used it lightly, tied a scarf over her hair. She left a note on the table downstairs. ‘Don't send J. till I get back. It may take some hours. Cecilie.' And then added, ‘Don't worry.' She collected her bicycle and left the house by the back door. It took three hours hard cycling to get to Beaulieu.

Eilenburg hadn't come back to the hotel for two days. He had slept in his office on a camp bed, and followed the interrogation of the man Janot, and then of the woman who kept the grocer's store. The man resisted stubbornly, until the ingenuity of the Frenchman from the Milice reduced him to such agony that he began screaming information. Eilenburg left at this point. He went up to his office and issued orders. Notes of the man's admissions were sent up to him at intervals. He studied them carefully. A regular pick-up of agents from a grocery in the Place de la Cour; his home in Valbonne was a clearing house. He took orders from the local leader. The name followed. Eilenburg read that item several times.

The leader. The leader of the local Resistance. Delivered in one coup. He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. He must go on concentrating, working without pause. That kept the pain at a tolerable level. Like an anaesthetic. So long as he stayed at the Villa Trianon and immersed himself, he could cope with Minna's death.

There was a knock at the door. A junior officer came in, looking hesitant. Eilenburg snapped at him. ‘What is it?'

‘The suspect is dead, Herr Standartenführer.'

Eilenburg didn't say anything for some moments. He got up from his desk. ‘Send Melier up here.'

When the Frenchman came in he brought the stench of his work with him. Eilenburg came up to him. He looked into the pallid face, lightly oiled with the sweat of his labours and his own excitement. ‘You've killed him,' Eilenburg said quietly.

‘He must have had a weak heart,' was the reply.

Eilenburg clenched his fist and slammed it into the man's face. He was a small man and the blow sent him crashing back against the wall. Blood welled from his nose. It gave Eilenburg real satisfaction to see him bleed. ‘You incompetent pig,' he said. ‘He had more names to give. You went too far!' The man struggled to his feet; he jammed a dirty handkerchief against his face. Eilenburg said, ‘Make a mistake like that again and I'll have you shot. Now get out of here before you stain the carpet!'

He had sent a car to Valbonne, ordered the arrest of anyone found there, and planned the arrest of the lawyer Jean Dulac. He would be taken at his apartment that morning. Eilenburg drew a deep breath of satisfaction. The woman at the shop in the Place de la Cour was brought in while he was shaving. He told them to keep her in a cell till he was ready to see her. He let her wait for two hours and then one of his junior officers asked her some preliminary questions. Eilenburg went down and took his place at the back of the room. She was a wretched creature, he thought; red-eyed with weeping, skinny as a starving cat. Why did women have to involve themselves? He had no mercy for those who enticed soldiers into back streets so they could be murdered, or fed them poison in a glass of wine. He let Melier have those. But not this pathetic little peasant, wringing her hands and begging them to let her go because she had a baby at home. She was a Resistance worker, an enemy of Germany. A liar and an accomplice to men who blew up supplies and killed Germans. He leaned forward and interrupted, ‘Do you know who betrayed you?'

She shook her head. Naked fear gaped at him. And hiding in its shadow, hatred. He gave a name, and she gasped, and stuffed her fingers in her mouth. It wasn't the name of the man lying dead two doors away. She began to cry all over again.

‘I'm not going to let anyone hurt you,' Eilenburg said. ‘If you help me I'll let you go home to your child. And we already know about Jean Dulac. All I want is one more contact. Just for confirmation.'

When he came upstairs to his office again, Beatrice was on her way to the women's prison in Marseilles. There she would be shot. She hadn't said anything. He hadn't allowed his men even to slap her face. She was lucky to be out of reach when he heard that Dulac had been warned, and fled before the SS arrived. All he had netted was one dead man and a woman who wasn't worth questioning. He fell asleep at his desk, and finally gave in and went back to his hotel.

There was nobody there. Antoinette had gone. She had left the clothes and the pearl necklace behind. He collapsed on the bed, tearing at his tie and shirt collar, ripping at his uniform in a paroxysm of grief. Minna was dead. Crushed, mutilated, buried, under heaps of rubble. He cried out, defenceless against the loss. When he recovered himself he supposed he'd slept because it was dark.

He called her name. ‘Antoinette?' Then he remembered she had gone. He'd sent her away. The night he heard the news of Minna's death. He'd struck her and screamed at her, and told her to get out.… He telephoned.

They brought her back. He had bathed and changed his clothes. He had a large cognac by his side and he was calm. She came into the room and stood silently, looking at him. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Will you forgive me?' he asked her.

‘Yes,' she said. He got up and stood, holding out his hand. She came towards him hesitantly, and then put her hand into his. He looked down at her.

‘Minna isn't dead so long as I have you,' he murmured.

‘Who is Minna?'

‘The girl I was going to marry. She was killed in an air raid that night. I went mad when I heard it. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't hurt you.' She shook her head.

‘Will you come back to me, Antoinette?'

She put her arms round his waist and rested her head against his chest. He gripped her close and sighed a deep sigh of relief. ‘Poor Christian,' she said. ‘Poor darling love. I weep for you.'

‘Don't,' he told her. ‘Help me to forget. Stay with me.'

‘I'll never leave you,' she promised. ‘I'll stay with you always.'

The next morning he drove to the villa at Cap d'Antibes; she went with him, and they walked through the rooms together. She said, looking at the ground floor, ‘Who lived here before?'

‘Just vagrants,' he answered. ‘Do you like it?'

‘Yes.' Antoinette had never seen a private house like it before. More like the hotels where she'd worked since she was fourteen. So big, with lovely ceilings and the view over the sea. ‘Yes, I'd like to live here with you,' she said, and squeezed his hand. ‘And I'll make you happy here.'

‘I know you will,' he said. ‘Choose what you want for furniture and curtains, anything that pleases you. Tell them it's got to be ready by the end of the month.'

He went back to the Villa Trianon and she began a tour of the best shops in Nice.

Kate passed the block of flats; she cycled on, round the corner and then stopped. He had whispered the address. Apartment C, 23 rue de Tivoli. She walked back slowly, glancing up at the windows. It was a modest pre-war building. It was already dated, and the façade was peeling. But bright windowboxes made the shabbiness cheerful. She pushed the front door open and went inside. It was a small, dark hallway with a single chair, as dated in style as the architecture. A stair with a chromium handrail wound upwards, a tongue of yellow carpet spanned the steps and looked new. Kate started to go up. She heard the voices below her. One French, one German. She stiffened, not sure whether to go on or turn round and pass them quickly.

She went on. They followed. The woman was French; she was laughing and talking about a trip to Cannes they were planning that night. ‘If you can get away from your duties, darling.'

‘The Gestapo are busy doing the dirty work for us.' His guttural French was very good. ‘We won't be on duty tonight. Karl's senior officer – he always gives the late shift in the office to a wet-nose from Berlin.' They were close behind her.

There was a landing on each floor. Kate went up past it and then turned and looked quickly. She didn't even notice the woman. All she saw was the man who came out of the flat door as the German Major stopped in front of it. She heard him say,

‘Good morning. You're early. Been to see Karl?'

She didn't hear Pierrot's reply. Shock paralyses some. It galvanized Kate. She didn't need to see or hear any more. All she knew was that apartment C was above, and he might be coming up the stairs after her. She ran up and reached the landing. There was the front door marked C. In panic, she swung round the narrow landing, and then saw the door that opened on to the fire-escape. It was locked. No key. But a bolt, half-way up from the floor. It was stiff, but she levered it, and then the door was open and she was outside, perched on the rickety stairway, high above the ground. She looked down, and almost cried out. The old fear of heights hit her like a blow in the face. She reeled and clutched at the railing. Then she remembered Corrib's Peak. She took a very deep breath and looked away from the ground. It took five minutes of slow descent, avoiding the lure of the pavement below, to get her down to street level. Then Kate looked up. The roof was ridiculously low. The fire-escape stair was less than fifty feet above the ground.

She turned and ran back to where her bicycle was waiting. That pre-dawn premonition had been right. The traitor was Dulac's deputy, the man who had gone back to England specially to pick out his team for work in France. A double-agent, working for the Germans. ‘Good morning. You're early. Been to see Karl?' A friendly greeting to someone they knew well. No doubt was possible after that. She felt sick with anger. Janot and Beatrice. If she had gone to Beaulieu to transmit, she would have been safe and Jean Dulac arrested. He had tried to
save
her. She felt sickened, remembering how he had touched her that last night at the end of their training in England; the ‘friendly' kiss that was full of desire. The kiss he forced on her in the café, while the German NCO looked on, titillated.

She thrust the machine into the bushes, letting it fall, and burst into the house. Julie was in the kitchen. Julie said, ‘For Christ's sake, where have you been? He's been going crazy!' Kate didn't answer. She went out and into the hall. She shouted for him. A door opened and banged upstairs and he came running down. He was relieved and furious at the same time. ‘Where have you been? How dare you go off like that!'

‘I've found your traitor,' she said. ‘You're hurting me.'

He stepped back from her. ‘What are you saying? How have you found him?'

Kate sat on the bottom step; she felt suddenly so exhausted she couldn't stand any longer. ‘I went to Beaulieu,' she said slowly. She told him what she had seen.