Jackdaws (49 page)

This infuriatingly petty detail had
Flick stymied just minutes before the climax of the mission. She could not go
on until she solved the problem. She forced herself to think calmly, then said
to Antoinette, "Where did you get your basket?"

"At the little shop across the
street. You can see it from the window."

The windows were open, as it was a
warm evening, but the shutters were closed for shade. Flick pushed a shutter
open a couple of inches and looked out onto the rue du Château. On the other
side of the street was a store selling candles, firewood, brooms, and
clothespins.

She turned to Ruby. "Go and buy
three more bags, quickly."

Ruby went to the door.

"If you can, get different
shapes and colors." Flick was afraid the bags might attract attention if
they were all the same.

"Right."

Paul tied the last of the cleaners
to a chair and gagged her. He was apologetic and charming, and she did not
resist.

Flick gave cleaners' passes to Jelly
and Greta. She had held them back until the last minute because they would have
given away the mission if found on the person of a captured Jackdaw. With
Ruby's pass in her hand, she went to the window.

Ruby was coming out of the store
carrying three shopping baskets of different kinds. Flick was relieved. She
checked her watch: it was two minutes to seven.

Then disaster struck.

As Ruby was about to cross the road,
she was accosted by a man in military-style clothes. He wore a blue denim shirt
with buttoned pockets, a dark blue tie, a beret, and dark trousers tucked into
high boots. Flick recognized the uniform of the Milice, the security militia
that did the dirty work of the regime. "Oh, no!" she said.

Like the Gestapo, the Milice was
made up of men too stupid and thuggish to get into the normal police. Their
officers were upper-class versions of the same type, snobbish patriots who
talked of the glory of France and sent their underlings to arrest Jewish
children hiding in cellars.

Paul came and looked over Flick's
shoulder. "Hell, it's a frigging Militian," he said.

Flick's mind raced. Was this a
chance encounter, or part of an organized security sweep directed at the
Jackdaws? The Milice were infamous busybodies, reveling in their power to
harass their fellow citizens. They would stop people they did not like the look
of, examine their papers minutely, and seek a pretext to arrest them. Was the
questioning of Ruby such an incident? Flick hoped so. If the police were
stopping everyone on the streets of Sainte-Cécile, the Jackdaws might never
reach the gates of the château.

The cop started to question Ruby
aggressively. Flick could not hear clearly, but she picked up the words
"mongrel" and "black," and she wondered if the man was
accusing the dark-skinned Ruby of being a gypsy. Ruby took out her papers. The
man examined them, then continued to question her without handing them back.

Paul drew his pistol.

"Put it away," Flick
commanded.

"You're not going to let him
arrest her?"

"Yes, I am," Flick said
coldly. "If we have a shootout now, we're finished—the mission is blown,
whatever happens. Ruby's life is not as important as disabling the telephone
exchange. Put away the damn gun."

Paul tucked it under the waistband
of his trousers.

The conversation between Ruby and
the Militian became heated. Flick watched with trepidation as Ruby shifted the
three baskets to her left hand and put her right hand into her raincoat pocket.
The man grabbed Ruby's left shoulder in a decisive way, obviously arresting
her.

Ruby moved fast. She dropped the
baskets. Her right hand came out of her pocket holding a knife. She took a step
forward and swung the knife up from hip level with great force, sticking the
blade through his uniform shirt just below the ribs, angled up toward the
heart.

Flick said, "Oh, shit."

The man gave a scream that quickly
died off into a horrible gurgle. Ruby tugged the knife out and stuck it in
again, this time from the side. He threw back his head and opened his mouth in
a soundless cry of pain.

Flick was thinking ahead. If she
could get the body out of sight quickly, they might get away with this. Had
anyone seen the stabbing? Flick's view from the window was restricted by the
shutters. She pushed them wide and leaned out. To her left, the rue du Château
was deserted except for a parked truck and a dog asleep on a doorstep. Looking
the other way she saw, coming along the pavement, three young people in
police-style uniforms, two men and a woman. They had to be Gestapo personnel
from the château.

The Militian fell to the pavement, blood
coming from his mouth.

Before Flick could shout a warning,
the two Gestapo men sprang forward and grabbed Ruby by the arms.

Flick quickly pulled her head back
in and drew the shutters together. Ruby was lost.

She continued to watch through a
narrow gap between the shutters. One of the Gestapo men banged Ruby's right
hand against the shop wall until she dropped the knife. The girl bent over the
bleeding Militian. She lifted his head and spoke to him, then said something to
the two men. There was a short exchange of barked words. The girl ran into the
shop and came out with a storekeeper in a white apron. He bent over the
Militian, then stood up again, his face showing distaste—whether for the man's
ugly wounds or for the hated uniform, Flick could not tell. The girl ran off,
back in the direction of the château, presumably to get help; and the two men
frog-marched Ruby in the same direction.

Flick said, "Paul—go and get
the baskets Ruby dropped."

Paul did not hesitate. "Yes,
ma'am." He went out.

Flick watched him emerge onto the
street and cross the road. What would the storekeeper say? The man looked at
Paul and said something. Paul did not reply but bent down, swiftly picked up
the three baskets, and came back.

The storekeeper stared at Paul, and
Flick could read his thoughts on his face: at first shocked by Paul's apparent
callousness, then puzzled and searching for possible reasons, then beginning to
understand.

"Let's move quickly,"
Flick said as Paul came into the kitchen. "Load the bags and out, now! I
want us to pass through that checkpoint while the guards are still excited
about Ruby." She quickly stuffed one of the baskets with a powerful
flashlight, her disassembled Sten gun, six 32-round magazines, and her share of
the plastic explosive. Her pistol and knife were in her pockets. She covered
the weapons in the basket with a cloth and put in a slice of vegetable terrine
wrapped in baking paper.

Jelly said, "What if the guards
at the gate search the baskets?"

"Then we're dead," Flick
said. "We'll just try to take as many of the enemy with us as we can.
Don't let the Nazis capture you alive."

"Oh, my gordon," said
Jelly, but she checked the magazine in her automatic pistol professionally and
pushed it home with a decisive click.

The church bell in the town square
struck seven.

They were ready.

Flick said to Paul, "Someone is
sure to notice there are only three cleaners instead of the usual six.
Antoinette is the supervisor, so they may decide to ask her what's gone wrong.
If anyone shows up here, you'll just have to shoot him."

"Okay."

Flick kissed Paul on the mouth,
briefly but hard, then went out, with Jelly and Greta following.

On the other side of the street, the
storekeeper was staring down at the Militian dying on the pavement. He glanced
up at the three women, then looked away again. Flick guessed he was already
rehearsing his answers to questions: "I saw nothing. No one else was
there."

The three remaining Jackdaws turned
toward the square. Flick set a brisk pace, wanting to get to the château as
quickly as possible. She could see the gates directly ahead of her, on the far
side of the square. Ruby and her two captors were just passing through. Well,
Flick thought, at least Ruby is inside.

The Jackdaws reached the end of the
street and started across the square. The window of the Café des Sports,
smashed in last week's shootout, was boarded over. Two guards from the château
came across the square at a run, carrying their rifles, their boots clattering
on the cobblestones, no doubt heading for the wounded Militian. They took no
notice of the little group of cleaning women, who scuttled out of the way.

Flick reached the gate. This was the
first really dangerous moment.

One guard was left. He kept looking
past Flick at his comrades running across the square. He glanced at Flick's
pass and waved her in. She stepped through the gate, then turned to wait for
the others.

Greta came next, and the guard did
the same. He was more interested in what was going on in the rue du Château.

Flick thought they were home and
dry, but when he had checked Jelly's pass he glanced into her basket.
"Something smells good," he said.

Flick held her breath.

"It's some sausage for my
supper," Jelly said. "You can smell the garlic."

He waved her on and looked across
the square again. The three Jackdaws walked up the short drive, mounted the
steps, and at last entered the château.

CHAPTER

FIFTY

DIETER SPENT THE afternoon shadowing
Michel's train, stopping at every sleepy country halt in case Michel got off.
He felt sure he was wasting his time, and that Michel was a decoy, but he had
no alternative. Michel was his only lead. He was desperate.

Michel rode the train all the way
back to Reims.

A doomy sense of impending failure
and disgrace overwhelmed Dieter as he sat in a car beside a bombed building
near the Reims station waiting for Michel to emerge. Where had he gone wrong?
It seemed to him that he had done everything he could—but nothing had worked.

What if following Michel led
nowhere? At some point, Dieter would have to cut his losses and interrogate the
man. But how much time did he have? Tonight was the night of the full moon, but
the English Channel was stormy again. The Allies might postpone the invasion—or
they might decide to take their chances with the weather. In a few hours it
might be too late.

Michel had come to the station this
morning in a van borrowed from Philippe Moulier, the meat supplier, and Dieter
looked around for it, but could not see it. He guessed the van had been left
here for Flick Clairet to pick up. By now she might be anywhere within a radius
of a hundred miles. He cursed himself for not setting someone to watch the van.

He diverted himself by considering
how to interrogate Michel. The man's weak point was probably Gilberte. Right
now she was in a cell at the château, wondering what was going to happen to
her. She would stay there until Dieter was quite sure he had finished with her;
then she would be executed or sent to a camp in Germany. How could she be used
to make Michel talk—and fast?

The thought of the camps in Germany
gave Dieter an idea. Leaning forward, he said to his driver, "When the
Gestapo send prisoners to Germany, they go by train, don't they?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is it true that you put them
in the kind of railway cars normally used for transporting livestock?"

"Cattle trucks, yes, sir, it's
good enough for those scum, communists and Jews and the like."

"Where do they board?"

"Right here in Reims. The train
from Paris stops here."

"And how often do those trains
run?"

"There's one most days. It
leaves Paris late in the afternoon and stops here around eight in the evening,
if it's on time."

Before he could progress his idea
further, Dieter saw Michel emerge from the station. Ten yards behind him in the
crowd was Hans Hesse. They approached Dieter on the other side of the street.

Dieter's driver started the engine.

Dieter turned in his seat to watch
Michel and Hans.

They passed Dieter. Then, to
Dieter's surprise, Michel turned into the alley alongside the Café de la Gare.

Hans quickened his pace and turned
the same corner less than a minute later.

Dieter frowned. Was Michel trying to
shake off his tail?

Hans reemerged from the alley and
looked up and down the street with a worried frown. There were not many people
on the pavements, just a few travelers walking to and from the station and the
last of the city center workers heading for home. Hans mouthed a curse and
turned back into the alley.

Dieter groaned aloud. Hans had lost
Michel.

This was the worst foul-up Dieter
had been involved in since the battle of Alam Haifa, when wrong intelligence
had led Rommel to defeat. That had been the turning point of the North African
war. Dieter prayed this was not to be the turning point in Europe.

As he stared despondently at the
mouth of the alley, Michel emerged from the front entrance of the café.

Dieter's spirits leaped. Michel had
shaken off Hans but did not realize he had a second shadow. All was not yet
lost.

Michel crossed the road, breaking
into a run, and headed back the way he had come—toward Dieter in the car.

Dieter thought fast. If he tried to
follow Michel, maintaining the surveillance, then he, too, would have to run,
and that would make it obvious that he was tailing the man. It was no good: the
surveillance was over. It was time to seize Michel.

Michel pounded along the pavement,
shoving other pedestrians aside. He ran awkwardly, because of his bullet wound,
but he moved fast and rapidly approached Dieter's car.

Dieter made a decision.

He opened the car door.

As Michel drew level, Dieter got
out, narrowing the available pavement by holding the door wide. Michel swerved
to dodge around the obstacle. Dieter stuck out his leg. Michel tripped over his
outstretched foot and went flying. A big man, he fell heavily on the paved
sidewalk.