Death Ray (28 page)

‘Yes, Jacques,’ I said. ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Let’s hear it. Your last chance to speak.’

‘
Oui, Jacques. La vérité, rien que la vérité, toute la vérité
,’ Amélie sobbed.

His face bloodied, Jacques raised a hand to his mouth and removed a broken tooth. ‘I did not betray your father, Alain. He must have just been unlucky, or careless. That is the truth. OK, so I did encourage you and your brothers to take revenge, but all I wanted was for the Germans to be placed on alert, to flood the town with extra soldiers. That way I could tell London it was simply too dangerous for Operation Death Ray to proceed.’

‘Why don’t you want the operation to go ahead?’ I asked.

‘Before our escape to England my father was in Berlin,’ Jacques replied. ‘A few weeks ago he returned to Rochefort. I learned that from Renard. It didn’t seem that important until X informed me that the château and laboratories would be bombed immediately after Operation Death Ray.’

‘
Papa!
’ Then Amélie gasped as if she’d suddenly understood something devastating. ‘
Maman?
’

Wincing, Jacques spat out some blood and nodded to her. ‘Yes, Amélie,
Maman
is being held at the château too. To make sure Father co-operates.’ He summoned his strength and dragged himself up onto his knees. ‘So you see, Amélie, if Operation Death Ray goes ahead, our parents will be killed! I am not proud of what I’ve done, but I had to try and save them. Please try to understand.’

‘Oh, Jacques, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘This is all a pack of lies,’ Loki snarled hatefully. ‘Why didn’t you simply tell X about your parents being inside the château?’

Grimacing with pain, Jacques spat out more blood and snorted with derision. ‘You know X as well as I do, Loki. He sees only the big picture. Operation Death Ray is more important than my parents, your parents, anyone’s parents, in fact. More important than me or you. If I’d told him, he would simply have found someone else to lead the raid. I wouldn’t have been able to stop it.’

‘And what about Freya?’ said Loki. ‘Did you betray her?’

Jacques lowered his head and nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Loki. I will never forgive myself. But London kept insisting that the raid proceed despite all my efforts. It was my last resort. I couldn’t think of anything else. I figured that if our group was compromised, they’d
have
to reconsider.’

‘You bastard! I hope you rot in hell.’ Loki pressed the welrod against the back of Jacques’ head. Through clenched teeth, he hissed, ‘
Goodbye, Jacques!
’

‘
Non!
’ Amélie screamed.

‘WAIT!’ I SHOUTED
.

Loki hesitated and looked round at me. Amélie’s feeble torch light caught his eyes. They looked wild, full of bloodlust.

‘Killing Jacques won’t solve anything,’ I said.

‘
Justice!
’ he hissed. ‘It’s like Alain said, “An eye for an eye.”’

Amélie ran and threw her arms around her brother. Loki ordered her to move away. She refused, clinging to him tightly.

‘Do it,’ Alain called out. ‘Kill him.’

‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Put your gun down, Loki. I believe Jacques’ story. And what would you do in his position? If it was your mother and father? You’d stop at nothing to save them.’

‘I wouldn’t betray you, Finn. I’d rather die.’

‘I know, but what about the others? Think about it. We’ve only known them for a matter of weeks. Given the choice, who would you save?’

‘No. They’re Special Ops, Finn, like us. I’d not betray them.’

‘Really? Supposing you faced a stark choice. Either they die, or your parents die. You have to decide. There are no other options … Well, which would it be? Do
you
betray your fellow agents or do you effectively sign your parents’ death warrants?’

Loki’s hand, gripping the welrod, began to shake. ‘That’s not fair, Finn.’

‘No, it’s not. But it’s real.’

I could sense Loki struggling inside. ‘But he betrayed Freya.’ With renewed conviction he pressed the end of the welrod hard against Jacques’s head.

‘Listen, maybe not all is lost,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Maybe there is a way out of this, a way to save everyone
and
get the job done. But it’ll need all of us. Jacques, you know the inside of the château, don’t you?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, Finn, we’ve been there several times in the past when our family celebrated special occasions with the Moutons.’

‘So you know the layout inside.’

‘Some of it.’

‘Ever been down into the cellars?’

‘
Oui!
We used to play down there while our parents talked,’ Amélie interrupted.

‘Excellent. Then I’ve got a plan that might just salvage something from this God-awful mess. So, put down the gun, Loki.’

He didn’t budge. ‘Let’s hear this plan first.’

‘Like you suggested earlier, we need a truck,’ I said. ‘We already have enough German uniforms. We’ll set up the diversion and then head back to the château. We’ll pretend Amélie and Jacques are our prisoners and that we’re taking them to the château for questioning. That’ll get us inside. Once there, we find
Freya
and
Jacques and Amélie’s parents, then head for the beach.’

Max rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Not a bad idea, Finn, but will we really have time to set off the diversion
and
get back to the château before the paratroopers drop in?’

‘No you will not,’ interrupted Alain. ‘There is too much to do.’ He sounded very sure of himself. ‘Unless … Listen, I have an idea. I know most of my father’s old contacts in the Resistance
and
I know the area like the back of my hand. Although many have been arrested, I can get enough partisans together to handle sabotaging the railway line. All I need from you are the explosives and pressure switches. I’m afraid you’ll have to place the charges in the fuel depot, but if you set the delay correctly you can give yourselves sufficient time to get back to the château before all hell breaks loose.’

‘Are you sure you can do it?’ I asked. Alain nodded. Somehow I knew he’d not let us down. I reached out and shook his hand firmly.

‘Timing will be everything,’ observed Max. ‘The fuel depot is about six miles from the château. We’ll still need that truck.’

Again Alain came to our rescue. ‘That’s easy enough. There are always trucks on the road between Rochefort and Le Havre. If you are all in uniform, flag one down and then ambush it. As there are woods all along that road, it will be easy to park up in the trees until it is time to make your move. All we need to decide is the exact timing.’

‘Then we have a plan,’ I said. ‘Everybody agreed?’

With great reluctance Loki nodded and lowered his gun.

Everyone settled and tried to get comfortable for our long wait through the night. I noticed that only Amélie sat close to her brother. It was as if treachery was some kind of contagious disease and no one else wanted to risk being infected by it. Loki took me to one side. ‘Are you sure we can trust Jacques, Finn?’

‘We have to,’ I replied. ‘We’ll have very little time once inside the château. We need someone who knows the layout. We just have to take a chance on him.’

‘Can’t Amélie show us the way? She’s been there too.’

‘Maybe, but she’s that much younger than Jacques. She might not recall the layout as clearly as him.’ I sensed Loki remained unconvinced. ‘Listen, we’ll watch him like a hawk. One wrong move and we’ll deal with him. Permanently!’

Loki settled beneath a tree some ten feet from Jacques and Amélie, and stared at them through the darkness. Jacques chain-smoked, the tip of his cigarette glowing red, a pinpoint of light that told us he was still sitting there and hadn’t tried to make off.

Like me, I think Loki spent the next hour or two recalling all that had happened since our arrival at Mulberry House and just what other instances pointed to Jacques’ guilt. I remembered that on our last night together, when we were introduced to
Luc
and
Odette
, Amélie had spotted the
MADE IN ENGLAND
label in Freya’s glove and Max had later said that he’d seen
Jacques
, not Madame Dupuis, checking over the gloves. Even then Jacques had been planning ahead!

‘It was a bit risky, wasn’t it, Jacques?’ Loki suddenly piped up. ‘Letting Fritz know we were flying in. I mean, had there been a firefight, you might have been killed along with the rest of us.’

‘What are you talking about? I didn’t tell anyone about the drop.’

‘Lies, lies, lies …’ Loki tutted. ‘Tell him, Finn, about all the references to Freya that have been picked up over the airwaves. We even heard a Luftwaffe pilot mention it during our flight in.’

I recounted everything starting from the afternoon Nils had told me about the intercepted radio message mentioning
Freya detection
.

Jacques’ reaction was unexpected. He began to laugh. Loki scrambled to his feet, clearly intent on rushing Jacques and making him pay dearly for his outburst. I managed to restrain my friend and calm him. ‘Explain yourself, Jacques,’ I ordered.

‘What you overheard has nothing to do with
your
Freya, Loki. The Germans have codenames for many things, just like we do.
Freya
is the name they have given to their new long-range radar system.’

‘Yeah, right. That’s rather a neat coincidence,’ Loki responded disbelievingly. ‘Can’t you do better than that?’

‘It’s true. An unfortunate coincidence. Of course, the Germans should really have called the device
Heimdall
, but that would have been far too obvious.’

Something clicked inside my head. Like all
Norwegian
children I’d grown up reading the many Norse myths and legends. Heimdall was one of the gods, a watchman, who possessed great stamina and acute senses. It was said he could hear grass grow and see a hundred miles by day as well as by night … Exactly like radar! And Heimdall was often portrayed as the champion of the beautiful Freya, the goddess of love. I recalled the odd wording of the intercepts …
Freya Meldung – Freya detection
. They suddenly made sense. That’s exactly how Luftwaffe pilots would talk about an enemy aircraft having been picked up by their new radar system. Jacques was telling the truth. Then something else clicked inside my head.
Of course!
I reached for London’s decoded reply. ‘Now I get it,’ I said, waving it under Loki’s nose. ‘When London says
If can’t be removed Freya must be destroyed
, they mean the radar equipment, not
our
Freya!’

My unravelling of the true meaning of London’s reply offered Loki a little much-needed cheer. To pass the time, we got Jacques to tell us what he knew about Fritz’s radar systems. Being so into engineering and having gleaned much from contacts with his father, Renard and some of the British scientists from Worth Matravers who attended the briefings at Mulberry House, Jacques appeared to know a great deal. More than Nils had explained to me during our flight over.

Fritz was fiendishly clever. Although their Freya system was rubbish at accurately locating British planes, it had such a long reach, it enabled their early detection.
This
was vital as it gave the Luftwaffe loads of time to get airborne and into the right sector. Then, as our aircraft got close, a different German system – Jacques called them
Giant Würzburgs
– tracked them precisely. The really clever bit was that they used two Würzburgs alongside one another, one tracking our planes, the other the intercepting Luftwaffe fighters. Knowing the exact positions of both, the ground operators were able to guide their pilots to intercept our bombers. Now I knew why British losses had become so horrendous. I also understood why our experimental cockpit version of radar was so important – our pilots would see the enemy coming, despite the darkness and cloud. It might give them the edge.

‘If you manage to steal this Freya device, what use will it be to you?’ asked Alain.

Jacques stubbed out his cigarette on the ground before replying. ‘If we can discover how it works, then we can come up with a way of
brouillage
… erm, how you say,
jamming it
.’

‘If we all get out of this alive, maybe your father can help our experts,’ I added.

‘Yes, Finn, if we succeed I doubt X will have much trouble convincing him.’

We took it in turns to stand watch and then get some sleep. An hour before dawn we sorted through our gear, selecting the items Alain needed for sabotaging the railway line – several hefty lumps of plastic explosive, a handful of detonators and a couple of pressure switches that would be placed beneath the rails, the weight of the
train
activating them when the wheels passed over. We ran through our plan and timings once more. The supply train would be passing the fuel depot at ten-thirty that evening. When it derailed, mayhem would break out. We’d set the charges inside the fuel depot to go off five minutes later, doubling the panic. By the time it all kicked off, we’d need to be back close to the château, ready to drive inside as soon as the local garrison’s soldiers had left for the depot. With the parachute drop scheduled for eleven, it would all be hellishly tight. If the slightest thing went wrong, our grand plan would unravel and Operation Death Ray would be in tatters.

We said our goodbyes. Max, Loki and I shook Alain’s hand firmly and we wished each other luck. Alain cast Jacques a cool look and muttered to me, ‘Keep a close eye on him, Finn.’ Swinging the bags over his shoulders, he slipped away into the trees.

‘Right,’ said Max. ‘We’d better figure out precisely where we’re going to ambush the truck, and just how exactly we’re going to get in and out of the depot in one piece!’

I SHALL NEVER
forget the looks on the faces of those two corporals. We flagged down their truck in the middle of nowhere, about a mile from the château. Initially our German uniforms reassured the driver and his passenger. That is, until we lifted our weapons, ordered them out of their cab, frogmarched them into the woods, bound and gagged them, and ordered them to lie face down in a ditch and not move until dawn. The younger of the two shook like a leaf and promptly wet himself.