Madeleine's War (23 page)

He turned the photographs round and pushed them across the table until they were right in front of me.

“It's not a pretty situation, I can't disguise that. Both men are French, our allies. Neither has done anything wrong—in fact, Legros has worked hard on the weapon that may win the war at the very end. Perrault is a Resistance hero, a Nobel Prize winner. But…but circumstances have changed. We can't afford to take any risks.”

“Can't he be…Can't Legros be dealt with while he's in America? Wouldn't that be easier, less messy?”

“I was coming to that. And the answer is yes. We're trying. Or we shall be trying soon—this plan has only just got the go-ahead. But it's not the sort of thing we want coming out after the war is over, and in any case killing Legros is easier said than done—because we have to make it look like an accident and the New Mexico outfit, the Manhattan Project, is so close-knit that we can't approach someone
inside
the compound. Because if we do and we approach the
wrong
person, and they refuse, they might well tell Legros. Then the whole plan would be scuppered. Once he leaves the compound, he will almost certainly go straight to a port or an airport and there'll be precious little chance to make something look like an accident at the last moment.

“We can't have him arrested in America, because the French authorities there don't know about the Manhattan Project and if they made a fuss that would draw attention to his presence in North America. We don't want that, in case it alerts the Russians. If Legros were angered by his arrest, he might even divulge something about the Manhattan Project itself.

“We're still going to try to kill him in America, or aboard the liner he sails on, but we need you in France, standing by, as backup. In a way it's fortunate from our point of view that there was such a fuss over those women agents, and that MI6 stuck its oar into SC2's affairs. We'll be able to announce that the PM has intervened, that MI6 is back in its box, and that you have been selected to go to France to seek out what agents you can, women in particular. It's good cover.

“We'll brief the press that you are an SC2 hero, with a Military Cross, but also with only one lung, the result of a war injury. That will create sympathy for a hero, who is only engaged in a mopping-up activity, nothing ‘aggressive,' so to speak. It will square it with de Gaulle's people, too.”

He played again with the ring on his little finger.

“I also gather you have a special interest in one particular agent…” He tailed off.

I remained silent.

“So, until we contact you, to tell you either that Legros met with an accident in America, or that he did
not
meet with an accident, you are free to pursue both SC2 projects—doing your best to discover the fate of all the agents, and that of your own more personal interest. But then, if we fail with Legros and he makes it to France, it's all down to you. By then you must have located Perrault and prepared a plan, or you will have found out where Legros is expected to surface. Legros will be harder to locate and kill than Perrault, because he'll be on the move, but his death won't arouse as much attention. You'll find it easier to escape if you kill Legros than if you kill Perrault. In either case you must make it look like an accident, so there's no damage to our relations with the French.

“That's it.”

When I didn't say anything for a time, he went on: “I understand you have killed three people. Is that correct?”

I nodded.

“May I ask how you killed them?”

“Two I shot, the other I garrotted.”

He raised one eyebrow.

“I'm impressed.” He nodded to himself. “So…how can I say this…killing, killing at close range, is not a problem for you?”

“I…I had thought—hoped—I'd seen the back of it. They were desperate times.”

“I hope I've shown that we're
still
in desperate times.”

I breathed out heavily. “But there's something…almost
theoretical
about all this, isn't there? You can't be certain that Legros will tell Perrault or that Perrault will tell the Russians. Maybe Legros is an anti-communist.”

“Maybe. But we can't take that risk. We understand that several of the physicists in the Manhattan Project think the information should be shared with the Russians. One of them travelled all the way to Downing Street to bend Winston's ear. The PM told him to stop interfering!”

He shook his head. “No, both Legros and Perrault are scientists, and long-standing colleagues. When they meet, they are bound to talk physics, uranium, plutonium, atomic bombs. Our calculation is that the great secret will change hands. A lot of wartime activity is about calculation—you know that.”

It's not every day you are asked to kill someone, still less an ally. Until then, I hadn't really looked beyond the end of the war, but if what Hathaway said was right, the end of war was only the beginning of something else, almost as bad.

Quite apart from that, could Hathaway be trusted? Was the Manhattan Project for real? Was there some other reason—too secret for me to be let in on—for Perrault's assassination? Was I being roped into something that I would regret?

But if I couldn't trust the prime minister, who
could
I trust?

And at the same time, it would mean I could go to France, and that was where Madeleine was, alive or dead.

All of a sudden my insides had settled. I was more comfortable in my skin. I was going to be
doing
something at last.

“And if I get caught?”

“You know the answer to that, too. You are on your own. It was a personal vendetta, as a result of what happened earlier in the war. You went beyond your remit, your girlfriend or wife was killed in France, perhaps by the Resistance—we'll work something out. The real reason cannot surface. We'll give you written authority, signed by the PM, to say you are looking for agents. That will give you access everywhere, and be one hell of a memento after the war.”

“If I say no?”

He nodded again. “I would understand. But I—we—calculate you won't say no. Someone you love is missing. You hate sitting here, being unable to go looking. This is your chance. We are offering you a deal, a quid pro quo. A momentous job in the war, the opportunity to have an
important effect on the post-war world, and a chance to settle something personal. If you agree, you won't hear from us again until the Legros mission in the United States or aboard ship either succeeds or it fails. You will receive an anonymous secret telegram saying either that ‘the wedding has been called off,' or else ‘the wedding goes ahead.' ”

He didn't say anything else for a moment. Then, “What's it to be?”

I remembered asking Madeleine much the same question at her interview for SC2 in The Farm. In war, all the important decisions have to be taken quickly.

I rolled the PM's cigar near my ear, then under my nose.

“I'll take this with me,” I said, holding it up before slipping it into my pocket. “If I succeed with Legros or Perrault, I'll send you a brief message: ‘Havana smoking.' How's that?”

“I think it's melodramatic.” He paused. “The PM will
love
it.”

I HAD NEVER SEEN SO MUCH SHINGLE
. There was more shingle in Blakeney than there was sand in Ardlossan. It rode high out of the water, a grey-yellow North Sea, and disappeared east and west as if it would go on for ever. This was not a romantic seascape—far from it. It was much too bleak to be romantic.

I didn't know Blakeney and I didn't know north Norfolk or East Anglia. And I doubted I would be coming back any time soon. I had twenty-four hours before I left for France, just enough for a swift dash to see Madeleine's mother, in case she could tell me anything about her daughter that I didn't know and might help find her. It was a long time since we'd had word from Oak and a mother's inside knowledge might make all the difference.

The train from King's Cross had stopped an interminable number of times—Hitchin, Baldock, Cambridge, Ely, Downham Market, and all the rest—arriving at King's Lynn more than three hours after its whistles and steam had seen us off. I used Mr. Churchill's letter for the first time to get me inside the coastal exclusion zone. It worked perfectly.

I had found Madeleine's mother's cottage easily enough. The taxi that I shared with another rail passenger belonged to a firm, the King's Men, with a small office in the harbour town. We had stopped there and simply asked if they knew where Mrs. Dirac lived. They did.

The only problem: she wasn't in. I hadn't been able to alert her to my arrival: I knew from Madeleine that she didn't have a phone and letters to and from Blakeney would have taken too much time. I had been waiting now for more than two hours and it was coming up for three o'clock.
The last train back to London left King's Lynn at 7:13 but I had made a reservation at the Blakeney pub, the Three Crowns, in case I had to stay the night.

I was sitting now on a small wooden bench on the harbour jetty, watching the fishermen coming in. Most of them already had their catch packed up in long, thin fish boxes by the time they arrived home and simply winched the boxes ashore. The fish would be down in London by midnight, where they would land a pretty penny. The fishermen would have made even better money in wartime but for the fact that they couldn't go too far out to sea because of the threat of enemy submarines.

Across the jetty was a small, green-painted caravan with a flap in one side, selling tea and cakes and sandwiches, and I thought a mug of tea would not go amiss. The wind wasn't letting up.

I got to my feet and started across the jetty. Another fishing smack was chugging down the small channel-amid-mudflats that Blakeney was at low tide. As I did so, I noticed another taxi coming down the gentle hill of the High Street. It pulled round and stopped outside the white-painted cottage that I knew belonged to Mrs. Dirac.

I watched as the solitary figure in the back seat leaned forward, presumably to pay, and the figure waited, presumably for change or a receipt. Then the driver's door opened and the taxi man went round to the back of the car, taking out what looked like a large briefcase. A small woman got out of the rear passenger door. It was not obvious, at that distance, that this was Madeleine's mother. Their physical resemblance was slight to non-existent: different hair colour, a different build—Victoria Dirac was chunkier than her daughter—and she had a different way of moving. The taxi man handed her the briefcase, closed the boot of the car, and returned to the driver's seat. Mrs. Dirac took a key from her handbag, waved the taxi driver goodbye, and let herself into her cottage.

I decided to have some tea anyway. I wouldn't like it if, the minute I got home after a trip, someone knocked on the door. We might well get off on the wrong foot.

So I bought a tea and a digestive biscuit, and went back to my bench, keeping an eye on the cottage in case Mrs. D. decided to go out again straightaway.

After about a quarter of an hour I crossed the jetty and knocked on her door.

There was a short delay, and then she opened it. Unlike Madeleine, she
had dark hair, cut short, vivid blue eyes. She was wearing a tweed skirt with a cream silk shirt. She looked very smart and businesslike, very composed.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Dirac, I'm Matthew Hammond, Matt Hammond—does that name mean anything to you?”

She looked puzzled for a moment, but then her face broke into a smile, followed by a frown. “Yes, yes, it took me a moment—not expecting…You haven't got bad news, have you?”

“No, no!” I said quickly. “No, that's not why I'm here.”

She closed her eyes and covered them with her fingers. Dropping her hand and opening her eyes, she said, “Thank the Lord for that. I thought…You know what I thought.”

I nodded. “Of course. It's natural. I'm sorry if I startled you.”

“If you don't have bad news, do you have
good
news? Have you come all this way from London specially?”

“Might we go inside, Mrs. Dirac? Somewhere we can sit and talk.”

“Yes, of course. Silly of me. Please come in.”

The front door opened directly into the living room, which was pleasant enough, with airy windows, two sofas, a wireless, a big mirror on one wall, and a fireplace with several photographs of Madeleine, her mother, an older man whom I took to be her father, and a younger man about whom I didn't want to think too much right now. A small pile of what looked like sheet music was stacked on an upright piano.

Hearing us, a dog came through from another room—a spaniel. He, or she, came up to me and sniffed my trousers.

“Wellington!” said Mrs. Dirac. “Behave!”

She looked at me and smiled. “Don't mind him. He has a general's name but he's harmless.”

I stroked the dog and he jumped up on to a sofa.

I sat down next to him and Mrs. Dirac sat in a cane chair opposite me.

“May I offer you something? I'm forgetting my manners—I've only just got in after a day at a client's house in Cromer. I make and fit curtains—that's what I was doing all day. Have you been waiting long?”

“It doesn't matter at all how long I've been waiting, but I'm glad we're here now. And I don't need anything except your permission to smoke.”

“Yes, let's have a cigarette?” she replied. “Have you got enough for me?”

I took out my cigarette case and opened it.

She reached forward.

As she took a cigarette I said, “Madeleine gave me this.”

She let me light her cigarette before saying, “So you are more than her boss?”

“She didn't tell you?”

She shook her head.

I paused for a moment. I wasn't sure what to make of what she had just said. And I couldn't make out her mood. Was she anxious that I was there? She seemed calm.

“The reason I am here, Mrs. Dirac, is that—and I don't want you to be unduly alarmed—is that we haven't heard from Madeleine since a couple of days after the invasion in June—”

She looked up sharply, holding her tongue between her lips. It was an expression that still gave nothing away.

“The last we heard was when she broke off in the middle of a transmission. It's obviously not the best news we could have, but it may not mean the worst, not by any means. If we, in the office, in the government, felt that, I wouldn't be here.”

She rearranged some books on the low wooden table between us. She looked straight at me. Her gaze was steady. “Go on.”

“Madeleine was scheduled to make contact with a local Resistance circuit in a certain part of France. At least—she was if she felt that circuit was safe. Some of our circuits, as you may have read, were penetrated by the Germans.

“If she
did
contact the circuit and made a mistake…if she judged the circuit hadn't been penetrated when in fact it had…then most likely she would have been captured. However, if she decided the circuit
wasn't
safe, then she had two choices. She could either remain in France, until the Germans eventually started to withdraw, then join the Resistance in a rebellion,
or
she could make contact with one of the ratlines—the escape routes—and eventually be ferried safely home. Moving along a ratline can take anything up to three or four months depending on the exact route and the German presence in the areas which the lines pass through. And that's provided she didn't get injured, or ill. Once you are in a ratline there is no communication, because communication is a weak point and we need the ratlines very badly.”

She nodded. “It's been close to three months now since D-Day. And didn't I read that the Germans have begun their withdrawal?”

“Yes, but we haven't given up hope. And Madeleine is not the only one
who hasn't been in touch—thirteen others are missing.” I didn't intend to mention that all our agents were equipped with suicide pills.

She closed her eyes again, and then opened them. I still couldn't read her mood. She
must
be anxious but…maybe she could sit on her feelings.

“What is it you want from me?”

“I want you to tell me about Madeleine and her time in France. What were her habits? In the chaos of invasion, what might she have done, where might she have gone? If she was injured, how would she have reacted? If you were me, and had to go looking for her, where would you look, where would you start?”

She leaned forward, crushed out the remains of her cigarette in the ashtray, and stood up.

“I think this calls for a drink, yes? Whisky suit you?”

I nodded. “Perfect.”

“I'll put Wellington in the garden. Then we can concentrate.”

She picked up the dog and went through into another room. I heard a door open and close as she let the spaniel outside. Then there was the sound of a tap running. Did she find comfort in action? She came back with a tray, a cut-glass decanter of whisky, two glasses, and a jug of water.

She sat down again and poured the whiskies.

“Water?”

“Yes, please. About half and half.”

We raised our glasses to one another and for a moment enjoyed what the whisky had to offer.

“I can think of two things, Colonel Hammond; two places she might go, if she got the chance. One is the Convent of St. Hilaire in the northern part of the Limoges region. Madeleine was never going to be a nun, but she went to school there, and she loved it and made some good friends. Some of them
will
have become nuns, and Madeleine would know she would receive sanctuary there and they would hide her if it were necessary. She mentioned it to me.”

She sipped her whisky and a thought struck her. “How did she move around? Did she have a car?”

I shook my head. “A bicycle.”

“And where was she dropped—I take it she
was
parachuted in?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I am not allowed to tell you where.”

She just looked at me, tapping her teeth with her whisky glass.

“Le Gâvre,” I whispered. “Now forget it, please.”

Ever so slightly, she smiled. “That's not
so
far from St. Hilaire. Bicyclable in a day or two, I should say.”

“You said two things.”

She nodded.

“Did she tell you about her marriage?”

“To Philippe, you mean? Yes, she did. I found it a weird story—I couldn't quite believe it, but I understand he was killed, carrying out Resistance work.”

“Yes, he was. It was tragic but I am sure Madeleine, happy as she might be with you, might want to visit his family home, his grave even—if there is one.”

She pulled at the sleeves of her shirt.

“Madeleine was eighteen when she fell in love with Philippe. It was her first time and she was eighteen. You're never…In my experience one is never quite in love again like you are the first time, in your teenage years, when you are so innocent. Madeleine has what you might call ‘unfinished business' over Philippe, so she may well have risked a lot to go and wind it up.”

“She had the rest of her life to wind it up.”

Mrs. Dirac shrugged. “Yes, of course. But that's not how people think, is it? She was
there
, or near there. That's all it would have taken. Believe me, I know my daughter.”

I let a long silence go by, sipping my whisky. I wasn't sure I bought all of what Mrs. Dirac said. The Madeleine I knew was anything but sentimental, and from what she'd told me, her affair and marriage to Philippe had damped down as quickly as it had caught fire.

But I couldn't afford to ignore her advice. I couldn't remember exactly where Madeleine had met Philippe—I mean the town from where they explored the caves and where they got married. But I did remember it was on the west side of France, south from Le Gâvre and St. Nazaire. I suppose she might just have thought it worthwhile to return to that part of her past, as her mother said. It was something to bear in mind.

I drained my whisky glass and looked at my watch. It wasn't yet five thirty.

“If I walk round to the taxi office, how likely am I to get someone to take me to King's Lynn?”

She pressed her lips together. “I can't say, but it's a short walk to the office. What time is your train?”

“The last one's at seven thirteen.”

“You should do it easily, but if you can't get a taxi you can stay here if you wish.”

“Thank you. But I took the precaution of booking a room at the pub. I couldn't be certain when you would be home.”

She nodded. “Well, let's walk to the taxi office together. They know me so they might put themselves out when they wouldn't for a stranger. It was Jeannie Slater from the taxi firm who rang Madeleine to say I was ill on the day we were supposed to have lunch.”

As it happened, there was no problem getting a taxi, and I made the train at King's Lynn easily enough.

As I was preparing to leave Mrs. Dirac's front room, I admired the photographs on her mantelpiece.

“Was Madeleine a tomboy? She looks like one.”