The sergeant's face dropped. "Colonel, sir!" He sprang to attention.
"That's better. You're going to need a doctor. Tell chummy here when he's capable of listening that I hope he's learned something. Next time it could be the death of him."
As they drove away, Sarah said, "You don't hesitate at all. do you?"
"What's the point?"
"I think I understand what Jack Carter meant. You have an aptitude for killing, I think."
"Words," he said. "Games in the head. That's all I had for years. Nothing but talk, nothing but ideas. Let's have some facts. Let's stop playing games in black satin dresses with our hair blonded. You know what the first technique is that the Gestapo employ in breaking down any woman agent who falls into their hands?"
"You're obviously going to tell me."
"Multiple rape. If that doesn't do the trick, the electric shock treatment comes next. I used to have a girlfriend in Berlin. She was Jewish."
"I know. Carter told me about her as well."
"How they tortured, then murdered her in the Gestapo cellars at Prince Albreehtstrasse?" Martineau shook his head. "He doesn't know everything. He doesn't know that Kaufmann, the head of the Gestapo in Lyons who I killed last November, was the man responsible for Rosa's death in Berlin in nineteen thirty-eight."
"I see now," she said softly. "Sergeant Kelly said you were different and he was right. You hated Kaufmann for years and when you finally took your revenge, you found it meant nothing."
"All this wisdom." He laughed coldly. "Going over there and taking on the Gestapo isn't like one of those movies they make at Elstree Studios. There are fifty million people in France. You know how many we estimate are active members of the Resistance?"
"No."
"Two thousand, Sarah. Two lousy thousand." He was disgusted. "I don't know why we bother."
"Then why do you? Not just for Rosa or your grandfather." He turned briefly and she said, "Oh, yes, I know about that too."
There was a silence. He opened his cigarette case one-handed. "Do you want one of these things? A bad habit, but a great comfort in the clinches."
"All right," she said and took one.
He gave her a light. "Something I've never talked about. I was due to go to Harvard m nineteen seventeen. Then America joined in the war. I was seventeen, officially under age. Joined up on sheer impulse and ended up in the trenches in Flanders." He shook his head Whatever you mean by hell on earth, that was the trenches. So many dead you lost count."
"It must have been terrible," she said.
"And I loved every minute of it. Can you understand that? I lived more in one day, felt more, than in a year of ordinary living. Life became real, bloody, exciting. I couldn't get enough."
"Like a drug?"
"Exactly. I was like the man in the poem, constantly seeking Death on the battlefield. That was what I ran away from, back to Harvard and Oxford cloisters and the safe world of classrooms and books, everything in the head."
"And then the war came round again."
"And Dougal Munro yanked me out into the real world.... And the rest, as they say, you know."
Later, lying in bed smoking a cigarette, listening to the rain tapping at the window, he heard the door open. She said softly through the darkness, "It's only me."
"Really?" Martineau said.
She took off her robe and got into bed beside him. She was wearing a cotton nightdress and he put an arm around her automatically. "Harry," she whispered. "Can I make a confession?"
"You obviously intend to."
"I know you probably imagine, along with everyone else that I'm a delicate little middle-class virgin, but I'm afraid I'm not."
"Is that a fact?"
"Yes, I met a Spitfire pilot at the hospital last year. He used to come in for treatment for a broken ankle."
"And true love blossomed?"
"Not really. More like mutual lust, but he was a nice chap and I don't n-gn-t it. H- was shot down over iht Channel three months ago."
She started U ery. for no reason that made any kind of sense, and Martineau held her tight, wordless in the dark.
T
T. he following day just after noon at Fermanville on the Cherbourg Peninsula, Karl Hagan, the duty sergeant at the central strongpoint of the 15th Coastal Artillery Battery, was leaning on a concrete parapet idly enjoying a cigarette in the pale afternoon sunshine when he observed a black
Mercedes coming up the track. No escort so it couldn't be anyone important-and then he noticed the pennant fluttering on the bonnet. Too far away to see what it was, but to an old soldier it was enough. He was inside the operations room in a flash, where Captain Reimann, the battery commander, sprawled at his desk, tunic buttons undone, reading a book.
"Someone coming, sir. Looks like top brass to me. Shock inspection perhaps."
"Right. Klaxon alarm. Get the men to fall in, just in case."
Reimann buttoned his tunic, buckled his belt and adjusted his cap to a satisfactory angle. As he went out on the redoubt, the Mercedes pulled in below. The driver got out. The first person out was an army major with staff stripes on his pants. The second was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in leather trenchcoat, white scarf knotted carelessly at his neck, desert goggles pulled up above the peak of his cap.
Reimann had never been so shocked in his life and he grabbed at the parapet. At the same moment he heard Sergeant Hagan's voice and the battery personnel doubled out in the courtyard below. As Reimann hurried down the steps the two battery lieutenants, Scheel and Planck, took up their positions.
Reimann moved forward and remembering what he'd heard of Rommel's preferences chose the military rather than the Nazi salute. "Herr Field Marshal. You do us a great honor."
Rommel tapped the end of his field marshal's baton against the peak of his cap. "Your name?"
"Reimann, Herr Field Marshal."
"Major Hofer, my aide."
Hofer said, "The Field Marshal will see everything, including the subsidiary strongpoints. Please lead the way."
"First, Major, I'll inspect the troops," Rommel told him. "An army is only as strong as its weakest point, always remember that."
"Of course, Herr Field Marshal," Hofer said.
Rommel moved down the line, stopping here and there to talk to an individual who took his fancy. Finally he turned. "Good turnout. Highly satisfactory. Now we go."
For the next, hour he tramped the clifftop from one strongpoint to another as Reimann led the way. Radio rooms, men's quarters, ammunition stores, even the urinals. Nothing escaped his attention.
"Excellent, Reimann," he told the young artillery officer. "First-rate performance. I'll endorse your field unit report personally."
Reimann almost fainted with pleasure. "Herr Field Marshal-what can I say?"
He called the honor guard to attention. Rommel tapped the baton against his cap again and got into the Mercedes. Hofer joined him on the other side, and as the driver drove away, the major checked that the glass partition was closed tight.
"Excellent," Hofer said. "Have a cigarette. I think you carried that off very well, Berger."
"Really, Herr Major?" Heini Baum said. "I get the booking then?"
"One more test, I think. Something a little bit more ambitious. Dinner at some officers' mess, perhaps. Yes, that would be good. Then you'll be ready for Jersey."
"Anything you say." Baum leaned back, inhaling deeply on the cigarette.
"So, back to the field marshal to report," Konrad Hofer said.
When Sarah and Harry Martineau went into the library at Berkley Hall, Jack Carter was sitting at the table, the maps spread before him.
"Ah, there you are," he said. "Brigadier Munro has gone up to London to report to General Eisenhower, but he'll be back tonight. We'll both see you off from Hornley Field. Any problems?"
"None that I can think of." Martineau turned to Sarah. "What about you?"
"I don't think so."
"Your clothes have all been double-checked for French-ness," Carter said. "So that's taken care of. Here are your papers, Sarah. French identity card with photo. German Ausweis, with different photo. Now you know why they asked you to change clothes at the photography session. Ration cards. Oh, and a tobacco ration card."
"You're supposed to have one of those even if you don't smoke," Martineau told her.
"These documents are one hundred percent," Carter said. "Right paper, same watermarks. Typewriters, ink- everything perfect. I can assure you that there is no way that even the most skilled Abwehr or Gestapo operative could find them anything but genuine." He handed her a slip of paper. "There are your personal details. Anne-Marie Latour. WeVe kept to your own age and birthdate. Born in Brittany naturally, to explain your accent. WeVe made your place of birth Paimpol on the coast. I believe you know it well?"
"Yes, my grandmother lived there. I spent many holidays with her."
"Normally you'd have some considerable length of time to get used to your new identity. In this case that just isn't possible. However, you will have Harry with you and it should be for no more than three days. Four at the most."
"I understand."
"One more thing. Your relationship with Standarten-fiihrer Vogel must at all times seem convincing. You do appreciate what that could entail?"
"Sharing a room?" The smile when she turned to Marti-neau was mischievous. "Is that all right with you, Colonel?"
For once, Martineau was put out and he frowned. "You little bitch!"
It was as if they were alone for a moment and she touched his face gently with her fingertips. "Oh, Harry Martineau, you are lovely when you're angry." She turned to Carter. "I think you can take it there'll be no problem, Captain."
Carter, hugely embarrassed, said hurriedly, "All right. Then read this, both of you. Regulations, Sarah."
It was a typical SOE operations order, cold, flat, precise, no-nonsense language. It laid out the task ahead of them, procedure, communication channel via the Cressons in Granville. Everything was covered, even down to a code name for the operation, JERSEYMAN. At the end of the flimsy it said: NOW DESTROY NOW DESTROY.
"All right?" Martineau asked her.
She nodded and he struck a match and touched it to the paper, dropping it into the ashtray. "That's it then," he said. "I'll go and do my packing. See you two later."
On the bed in his room, the wardrobe people had laid out a three-piece suit in light-gray tweed, shoes, some white shirts, two black ties. There was also a military overcoat in soft black leather of a kind worn by many SS officers.
The gray-green SS uniform hung behind the door. He checked it carefully. On the left sleeve was the RFSS cuff title of Himmler's personal staff, an SD patch above it. The Waffenfarben, the colored piping on the uniform and cap, was toxic green, indicating that he belonged to the SS Security Service. The oak leaves of his collar patches indicating his rank were in silver thread. There was an Iron Cross First Class on the left side of the tunic. His only other decoration was the Order of Blood, a medal struck specially for old comrades of the Fiihrer who had served prison sentences for political crimes during the twenties.
He decided to try the uniform on and undressed quickly. Everything fit to perfection. He buttoned the tunic and fastened the belt, a rare specimen that had an eagle on the buckle with a swastika in one claw and SS runes in the other. He picked up the cap and examined the silver death's-head badge, running his sleeve across it, then reached inside, scratched a slight tear in the silk lining and withdrew the rigid spring so that the cap crumpled. It was an affectation of many oldtimers, although against i eg-ulations.
He put it on his head at a slight angle. From behind, Sarah said quietly, "You look as if you're enjoying yourself. I get the feeling you like uniforms."
"I like getting it right," he said. "I often think I missed my vocation. I should have been an actor. Getting it right is important, Sarah. You don't get second chances."
There was a kind of distress on her face and she moved close and gripped his arm. "I'm not sure if it's you anymore, Harry."
"It isn't, not in this uniform. Standartenfuhrer Max Vogel, of the SD. Feared by his own side as much as the French. You'll see. This isn't a game anymore."
She shivered and put her arms around him. "I know, Harry, I know."
"Are you frightened?"
"Good God, no." She smiled up at him. "Not with Gypsy Sara in my corner."
Eisenhower sat at his desk in the study at Hayes Lodge, reading glasses perched on his nose as he worked his way through the file. He sat back, removed the glasses and looked across at Dougal Munro.
