Jackdaws (14 page)

"What?"

"You might not like it. It's
very difficult, and dangerous." Diana looked skeptical. "What does it
involve, driving in the blackout?"

"I can't tell you much about
it, because it's secret."

"Flick, darling, don't tell me
you're involved in cloak-and-dagger stuff."

"I didn't get promoted to major
by driving generals to meetings."

Diana looked hard at her. "Do
you mean this?"

"Absolutely."

"Good Lord." Against her
will, Diana was impressed.

Flick had to get her positive
agreement to volunteer. "So—are you willing to do something very
dangerous? I mean it, you really are quite likely to get killed."

Diana looked excited rather than
discouraged. "Of course I'm willing. William's risking his life, why
shouldn't I?"

"You mean it?"

"I'm very serious."

Flick concealed her relief. She had
recruited her first team member.

Diana was so keen that Flick decided
to press her advantage. "There's a condition, and you may find it worse
than the danger."

"What?"

"You're two years older than I,
and all our lives you've been my social superior. You're the baron's daughter,
and I'm the housekeeper's brat. Nothing wrong with that, and I'm not
complaining. Ma would say that's how it should be."

"Yes, dear, so what's your
point?"

"I'm in charge of the
operation. You'll have to defer to me."

Diana shrugged. "That's
fine."

"It will be a problem,"
Flick insisted. "You'll find it strange. But I'll be hard on you until you
get used to it. This is a warning."

"Yes, sir!"

"We don't bother too much about
the formalities in my department, so you won't need to call me sir, or ma'am.
But we do enforce military discipline, especially once an operation has begun.
If you forget that, my anger will be the least of your worries. Disobeying
orders can get you killed in my line of work."

"Darling, how dramatic! But of
course I understand."

Flick was not at all sure Diana did
understand, but she had done her best. She took a scratch pad from her blouse
and wrote down an address in Hampshire. "Pack a case for three days. This
is where you need to go. You get the train from Waterloo to Brockenhurst."

Diana looked at the address.
"Why, this is Lord Montague's estate."

"Most of it is occupied by my
department now."

"What is your department?"

"The Inter Services Research
Bureau," Flick said, using the usual cover name.

"I trust it's more exciting
than it sounds."

"You can bet on that."

"When do I start?"

"You need to get there
today." Flick got to her feet. "Your training starts at dawn
tomorrow."

"I'll come back to the house
with you and start packing." Diana stood up. "Tell me
something?"

"If I can."

Diana fiddled with her shotgun,
seeming embarrassed. When she looked at Flick, her face showed an expression of
frankness for the first time. "Why me?" she said. "You must know
I've been turned down by everyone."

Flick nodded. "I'll be
blunt." She looked at the bloodstained rabbit corpses on the ground, then
lifted her gaze to Diana's pretty face. "You're a killer," she said.
"And that's what I need."

CHAPTER

TWELVE

DIETER SLEPT UNTIL ten. He woke with
a headache from the morphine, but otherwise he felt good: excited, optimistic,
confident. Yesterday's bloody interrogation had given him a hot lead. The woman
codenamed Bourgeolse, with her house in the rue du Bois, could be his way into
the heart of the French Resistance.

Or it might go nowhere.

He drank a liter of water and took
three aspirins to get rid of the morphine hangover; then he picked up the
phone.

First he called Lieutenant Hesse,
who was staying in a less grand room at the same hotel. "Good morning,
Hans, did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thank you, Major. Sir, I
went to the town hall to check out the address in the rue du Bois."

"Good lad," Dieter said.
"What did you find out?"

"The house is owned and
occupied by one person, a Mademoiselle Jeanne Lemas."

"But there may be other people
staying there."

"I also drove past, just to
have a look, and the place seemed quiet."

"Be ready to leave, with my
car, in an hour."

"Very good."

"And, Hans—well done for using
your initiative."

"Thank you, sir."

Dieter hung up. He wondered what
Mademoiselle Lemas was like. Gaston said no one in the Bollinger circuit had
ever met her, and Dieter believed him: the house was a security cut-out.
Incoming agents knew nothing more than where to contact the woman: if caught,
they could not reveal any information about the Resistance. At least, that was
the theory. There was no such thing as perfect security.

Presumably Mademoiselle Lemas was
unmarried. She could be a young woman who had inherited the house from her
parents, a middle-aged spinster looking for a husband, or an old maid. It might
help to take a woman with him, he decided.

He returned to the bedroom.
Stéphanie had brushed her abundant red hair and was sitting up in bed, with her
breasts showing over the top of the sheet. She really knew how to look tempting.
But he resisted the impulse to get back into bed. "Would you do something
for me?" he said.

"I would do anything for
you."

"Anything?" He sat on the
bed and touched her bare shoulder. "Would you watch me with another
woman?"

"Of course," she said.
"I would lick her nipples while you made love to her."

"You would, I know." He
laughed with pleasure. He had had mistresses before, but none like her.
"It's not that, though. I want you to come with me while I arrest a woman
in the Resistance."

Her face showed no emotion.
"Very well," she said calmly.

He was tempted to press her for a
reaction, to ask her how she felt about this, and was she sure she was happy
about it, but he decided to take her consent at face value. "Thank
you," he said, and he returned to the living room.

Mademoiselle Lemas might be alone
but, on the other hand, the house could be crawling with Allied agents, all
armed to the teeth. He needed some backup. He consulted his notebook and gave
the hotel operator Rommel's number in La Roche-Guyon.

When the Germans had first occupied
the country, the French telephone system had been swamped. Since then, the
Germans had improved the equipment, adding thousands of kilometers of cable and
installing automatic exchanges. The system was still overloaded, but it was
better than it had been.

He asked for Rommel's aide Major
Goedel. A moment later he heard the familiar cold, precise voice:

"Goedel."

"This is Dieter Franck,"
he said. "How are you, Walter?"

"Busy," Goedel said
crisply. "What is it?"

"I'm making rapid progress
here. I don't want to give details, because I'm speaking on a hotel phone, but
I'm about to arrest at least one spy, perhaps several. I thought the Field
Marshal might like to know that."

"I shall tell him."

"But I could use some
assistance. I'm doing all this with one lieutenant. I'm so desperate, I'm using
my French girlfriend to help me."

"That seems unwise."

"Oh, she's trustworthy. But she
won't be much use against trained terrorists. Can you get me half a dozen good
men?"

"Use the Gestapo—that's what
they're for."

"They're unreliable. You know
they're cooperating with us only reluctantly. I need people I can rely
on."

"It's out of the
question," Goedel said.

"Look, Walter, you know how
important Rommel feels this is—he's given me the job of making sure the
Resistance can't hamper our mobility."

"Yes. But the Field Marshal
expects you to do it without depriving him of combat troops."

"I'm not sure I can."

"For God's sake, man!"
Goedel raised his voice. "We're trying to defend the entire Atlantic
coastline with a handful of soldiers, and you're surrounded by able-bodied men
who have nothing better to do than track down scared old Jews hiding in barns.
Get on with the job and don't pester me!" There was a click as the phone
was hung up.

Dieter was startled. It was
uncharacteristic for Goedel to blow his top. No doubt they were all tense about
the threat of invasion. But the upshot was clear. Dieter had to do this on his
own.

With a sigh, he jiggled the rest and
placed a call to the château at Sainte-Cécile.

He reached Willi Weber. "I'm
going to raid a Resistance house," he said. "I may need some of your
heavyweights. Will you send four men and a car to the Hotel Frankfort? Or do I
need to speak to Rommel again?"

The threat was unnecessary. Weber
was keen to have his men along on the operation. That way, the Gestapo could
claim the credit for any success. He promised a car in half an hour.

Dieter was worried about working
with the Gestapo. He could not control them. But he had no choice.

While shaving, he turned on the
radio, which was tuned to a German station. He learned that the first-ever tank
battle in the Pacific theater had developed yesterday on the island of Biak.
The occupying Japanese had driven the invading American 162d Infantry back to
their beachhead. Push them into the sea, Dieter thought.

He dressed in a dark gray worsted
suit, a fine cotton shirt with pale gray stripes, and a black tie with small
white dots. The dots were woven into the fabric rather than printed on it, a
detail that gave him pleasure. He thought for a moment, then removed the jacket
and strapped on a shoulder holster. He took his Walther P38 automatic pistol
from the bureau and slid it into the holster, then put his jacket back on.

He sat down with a cup of coffee and
watched Stéphanie dressing. The French made the most beautiful underwear in the
world, he thought as she stepped into silk cami-knickers the color of clotted
cream. He loved to see her pull on her stockings, smoothing the silk over her
thighs. "Why did the old masters not paint this moment?" he said.

"Because Renaissance women
didn't have sheer silk stockings," said Stéphanie.

When she was ready, they left.

Hans Hesse was waiting outside with
Dieter's Hispano-Suiza. The young man gazed at Stéphanie with awestruck
admiration. To him, she was infinitely desirable and at the same time
untouchable. He made Dieter think of a poor woman staring into Cartier's shop
window.

Behind Dieter's car was a black
Citroën Traction Avant containing four Gestapo men in plain clothes. Major Weber
had decided to come himself, Dieter saw: he sat in the front passenger seat of
the Citroën, wearing a green tweed suit that made him look like a farmer on his
way to church. "Follow me," Dieter told him. "When we get there,
please stay in your car until I call you."

Weber said, "Where the hell did
you get a car like that?"

"It was a bribe from a
Jew," Dieter said. "I helped him escape to America."

Weber grunted in disbelief, but in
fact the story was true.

Bravado was the best attitude to
take with men such as Weber. If Dieter had tried to keep Stéphanie hidden away,
Weber would immediately have suspected that she was Jewish and might have
started an investigation. But because Dieter flaunted her, the thought never
crossed Weber's mind.

Hans took the wheel, and they headed
for the rue du Bois.

Reims was a substantial country town
with a population of more than 100,000, but there were few motor vehicles on
the streets. Cars were used only by those on official business: the police,
doctors, firemen, and, of course, the Germans. The citizens went about by
bicycle or on foot. Petrol was available for deliveries of food and other
essential supplies, but many goods were transported by horse-drawn cart.
Champagne was the main industry here. Dieter loved champagne in all its forms:
the nutty older vintages, the fresh, light, nonvintage cuvées, the refined
blanc de blancs, the demi-sec dessert varieties, even the playful pink beloved
of Paris courtesans.

The rue du Bois was a pleasant
tree-lined street on the outskirts of town. Hans pulled up outside a tall house
at the end of a row, with a little courtyard to one side. This was the home of
Mademoiselle Lemas. Would Dieter be able to break her spirit? Women were more
difficult than men. They cried and screamed, but held out longer. He had
sometimes failed with a woman, though never with a man. If this one defeated
him, his investigation was dead.

"Come if I wave to you,"
he said to Stéphanie as he got out of the car. Weber's Citroën drew up behind,
but the Gestapo men stayed in the car, as instructed.

Dieter glanced into the courtyard
beside the house. There was a garage. Beyond that, he saw a small garden with
clipped hedges, rectangular flower beds, and a raked gravel path. The owner had
a tidy mind.

Beside the front door was an
old-fashioned red-and-yellow rope. He pulled it and heard from inside the
metallic ring of a mechanical bell.

The woman who opened the door was
about sixty. She had white hair tied up at the back with a tortoiseshell clasp.
She wore a blue dress with a pattern of small white flowers. Over it she had a
crisp white apron. "Good morning, monsieur," she said politely.

Dieter smiled. She was an
irreproachably genteel provincial lady. Already he had thought of a way to
torture her. His spirits lifted with hope.

He said, "Good morning… Mademoiselle
Lemas?"

She took in his suit, noticed the
car at the curb, and perhaps heard the trace of a German accent, and fear came
into her eyes. There was a tremor in her voice as she said, "How may I
help you?"

"Are you alone,
Mademoiselle?" He watched her face carefully.