World War II Thriller Collection (63 page)

“Not what it was when you were a foreigner?”

This was obviously a familiar old argument. Flick interrupted it impatiently. “I'm very glad to hear that you're so patriotic, Jelly.”

“And why would you be interested in such a thing, may I ask?”

“Because there's something you could do for your country.”

Percy put in, “I told Flick about your . . . expertise, Jelly.”

She looked at her vermilion fingernails. “Discretion,
Percy, please. Discretion is the better part of valor, it says in the Bible.”

Flick said, “I expect you know that there have been some fascinating recent developments in the field. Plastic explosives, I mean.”

“I try to keep up to date,” Jelly said with airy modesty. Her expression changed, and she looked shrewdly at Flick. “This is something to do with the war, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Count me in. I'll do anything for England.”

“You'll be away for a few days.”

“No problem.”

“You might not come back.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It will be very dangerous,” Flick said quietly.

Jelly looked dismayed. “Oh.” She swallowed. “Well, that makes no difference,” she said unconvincingly.

“Are you sure?”

Jelly looked thoughtful, as if she were calculating. “You want me to blow something up.”

Flick nodded silently.

“It's not overseas, is it?”

“Could be.”

Jelly paled beneath her makeup. “Oh, my gordon. You want me to go to France, don't you?”

Flick said nothing.

“Behind enemy lines! God's truth, I'm too bloody old for that sort of thing. I'm . . .” She hesitated. “I'm thirty-seven.”

She was about five years older than that, Flick thought, but she said, “Well, we're almost the same age, I'm nearly thirty. We're not too old for a bit of adventure, are we?”

“Speak for yourself, dear.”

Flick's heart sank. Jelly was not going to agree.

The whole scheme had been misconceived, she decided. It was never going to be possible to find women who could do these jobs and speak perfect French. The
plan had been doomed from the start. She turned away from Jelly. She felt like crying.

Percy said, “Jelly, we're asking you to do a job that's really crucial for the war effort.”

“Pull the other leg, Perce, it's got bells on,” she said, but her mockery was halfhearted, and she looked solemn.

He shook his head. “No exaggeration. It could make a difference to whether we win or lose.”

She stared at him, saying nothing. Conflict twisted her face into a grimace of indecision.

Percy said, “And you're the only person in the country who can do it.”

“Get off,” she said skeptically.

“You're a female safebreaker who speaks French—how many others do you think there are? I'll tell you: none.”

“You mean this, don't you.”

“I was never more serious in my life.”

“Bloody hell, Perce.” Jelly fell silent. She did not speak for a long moment. Flick held her breath. At last Jelly said, “All right, you bastard, I'll do it.”

Flick was so pleased she kissed her.

Percy said, “God bless you, Jelly.”

Jelly said, “When do we start?”

“Now,” said Percy. “If you'll finish up that gin, I'll take you home to pack a case; then I'll drive you to the training center.”

“What, tonight?”

“I told you it was important.”

She swallowed the remains of her drink. “All right, I'm ready.”

She slid her ample bottom off the bar stool, and Flick thought: I wonder how she'll manage with a parachute.

They left the pub. Percy said to Flick, “You'll be all right going back on the Tube?”

“Of course.”

“Then we'll see you tomorrow at the Finishing School.”

“I'll be there,” said Flick, and they parted company.

She headed for the nearest station, feeling jubilant. It was a mild summer evening, and the East End was alive: a group of dirty-faced boys played cricket with a stick and a bald tennis ball; a tired man in soiled work clothes headed home for a late tea; a uniformed soldier, on leave with a packet of cigarettes and a few shillings in his pocket, strode along the pavement with a jaunty air, as if all the world's pleasures were his for the taking; three pretty girls in sleeveless dresses and straw hats giggled at the soldier. The fate of all these people would be decided in the next few days, Flick thought somberly.

On the train to Bayswater, her spirits fell again. She still did not have the most crucial member of the team. Without a telephone engineer, Jelly might place the explosives in the wrong location. They would still do damage but, if the damage could be repaired in a day or two, the enormous effort and risk of life would have been wasted.

When she returned to her bedsitting room, she found her brother Mark waiting there. She hugged and kissed him. “What a nice surprise!” she said.

“I've got a night off, so I thought I'd take you for a drink,” he said.

“Where's Steve?”

“Giving his Iago to the troops in Lyme Regis. We both work for ENSA most of the time, now.” ENSA was the Entertainments National Service Association, which organized shows for the armed forces. “Where shall we go?”

Flick was tired, and her first inclination was to turn him down. Then she remembered that she was going to France on Friday, and this could be the last time she ever saw her brother. “How about the West End,” she said.

“We'll go to a nightclub.”

“Perfect!”

They left the house and walked arm-in-arm along the street. Flick said, “I saw Ma this morning.”

“How is she?”

“All right, but she hasn't softened her attitude to you and Steve, I'm sorry to say.”

“I didn't expect it. How did you happen to see her?”

“I went down to Somersholme. It would take too long to explain why.”

“Something hush-hush, I suppose.”

She smiled acknowledgment, then sighed as she remembered her problem. “I don't suppose you happen to know a female telephone engineer who speaks French, do you?”

He stopped. “Well,” he said, “sort of.”

MADEMOISELLE LEMAS WAS
in agony. She sat rigid on the hard upright chair behind the little table, her face frozen into a mask of self-control. She did not dare to move. She still wore her cloche hat and clutched her sturdy leather handbag on her lap. Her fat little hands squeezed the handle of the bag rhythmically. Her fingers bore no rings; in fact she wore only one piece of jewelry, a small silver cross on a chain.

Around her, late-working clerks and secretaries in their well-pressed uniforms carried on typing and filing. Following Dieter's instructions, they smiled politely when they caught her eye, and every now and again one of the girls would speak a word to her, offering her water or coffee.

Dieter sat watching her, with Lieutenant Hesse on one side of him and Stéphanie on the other. Hans Hesse was the best type of sturdy, unflappable working-class German. He looked on stoically: he had seen many tortures. Stéphanie was more excitable, but she was exercising self-control. She looked unhappy, but said nothing: her aim in life was to please Dieter.

Mademoiselle Lemas's pain was not just physical, Dieter knew. Even worse than her bursting bladder was the terror of soiling herself in a room full of polite, well-dressed people going about their normal business. For a respectable elderly lady, that was the worst of nightmares. He admired her fortitude and wondered if she would break, and tell him everything, or hold out.

A young corporal clicked his heels beside Dieter and
said, “Pardon me, Major, I have been sent to ask you to step into Major Weber's office.”

Dieter considered sending a reply saying
If you want to talk to me, come and see me,
but he decided there was nothing to be gained by being combative before it was strictly necessary. Weber might even become a little more cooperative if he was allowed to score a few points. “Very well.” He turned to Hesse. “Hans, you know what to ask her if she breaks.”

“Yes, Major.”

“In case she doesn't . . . Stéphanie, would you go to the Café des Sports and get me a bottle of beer and a glass, please?”

“Of course.” She seemed grateful for a reason to leave the room.

Dieter followed the corporal to Willi Weber's office. It was a grand room at the front of the château, with three tall windows overlooking the square. Dieter gazed out at the sun setting over the town. The slanting light picked out the curved arches and buttresses of the medieval church. He saw Stéphanie crossing the square in her high heels, walking like a racehorse, dainty and powerful at the same time.

Soldiers were at work in the square, erecting three stout wooden pillars in a neat row. Dieter frowned. “A firing squad?”

“For the three terrorists who survived Sunday's skirmish,” Weber answered. “I understand you have finished interrogating them.”

Dieter nodded. “They have told me all they know.”

“They will be shot in public as a warning to others who may think of joining the Resistance.”

“Good idea,” Dieter said. “However, though Gaston is fit, both Bertrand and Geneviève are seriously injured—I'll be surprised if they can walk.”

“Then they will be carried to their fate. But I did not summon you to discuss them. My superiors in Paris have been asking me what further progress has been made.”

“And what did you tell them, Willi?”

“That after forty-eight hours of investigation you have arrested one old woman who may or may not have sheltered Allied agents in her house, and who has so far told us nothing.”

“And what would you
wish
to tell them?”

Weber banged his desk theatrically. “That we have broken the back of the French Resistance!”

“That may take longer than forty-eight hours.”

“Why don't you torture this old cow?”

“I am torturing her.”

“By refusing to let her go to the toilet! What kind of torture is that?”

“In this case, the most effective one, I believe.”

“You think you know best. You always were arrogant. But this is the new Germany, Major. You are no longer assumed to have superior judgment just because you are the son of a professor.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“Do you really think you would have become the youngest-ever head of the Cologne criminal intelligence department if your father had not been an important man in the university?”

“I had to pass the same exams as everyone else.”

“How strange that other people, just as capable as you, never seemed to do quite so well.”

Was that the fantasy Weber told himself? “For God's sake, Willi, you can't believe the entire Cologne police force conspired to give me better marks than you because my father was professor of music—it's risible!”

“Such things were commonplace in the old days.”

Dieter sighed. Weber was half right. Patronage and nepotism had existed in Germany. But that was not why Willi had failed to win promotion. The truth was that he was stupid. He would never get on anywhere except in an organization where fanaticism was more important than ability.

Dieter had had enough of this stupid talk. “Don't worry about Mademoiselle Lemas,” he said. “She'll talk
soon.” He went to the door. “And we will break the back of the French Resistance, too. Just wait a little longer.”

He returned to the main office. Mademoiselle Lemas was now making low moaning noises. Weber had made Dieter impatient, and he decided to speed up the process. When Stéphanie returned, he put the glass on the table, opened the bottle, and poured the beer slowly in front of the prisoner. Tears of pain squeezed from her eyes and rolled down her plump cheeks. Dieter took a long drink of beer and put the glass down. “Your agony is almost over, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Relief is at hand. In a few moments you will answer my questions; then you will find ease.”

She closed her eyes.

“Where do you meet the British agents?” He paused. “How do you recognize one another?” She said nothing. “What is the password?”

He waited a moment, then said, “Have the answers ready, in the forefront of your mind, and make sure they are clear, so that when the time comes, you can tell me quickly, without hesitation or explanations; then you can seek rapid release from your pain.”

He took the key to the handcuffs from his pocket. “Hans, hold her wrist firmly.” He bent down and unlocked the cuffs that fastened her ankle to the table leg. He took her by the arm. “Come with us, Stéphanie,” he said. “We're going to the ladies' toilet.”

They left the room, Stéphanie leading the way, Dieter and Hans holding the prisoner, who hobbled along with difficulty, bent at the waist, biting her lip. They went to the end of the corridor and stopped at a door marked
Damen.
Mademoiselle Lemas groaned loudly when she saw it.

Dieter said to Stéphanie, “Open the door.”

She did so. It was a clean, white-tiled room, with a washbasin, a towel on a rail, and a row of cubicles. “Now,” said Dieter. “The pain is about to end.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”

“Where do you meet the British agents?”

Mademoiselle Lemas began to cry.

Dieter said gently, “Where do you meet these people?”

“In the cathedral,” she sobbed. “In the crypt. Please let me go!”

Dieter breathed a long sigh of satisfaction. She had broken. “When do you meet them?”

“Three o'clock any afternoon, I go every day.”

“And how do you recognize one another?”

“I wear odd shoes, black and brown, now can I go?”

“One more question. What is the password?”

“ ‘Pray for me.' ”

She tried to move forward, but Dieter held her tightly, and Hans did the same. “Pray for me,” Dieter repeated. “Is that what you say, or what the agent says?”

“The agent—oh, I beg you!”

“And your reply?”

“ ‘I pray for peace,' that's my reply.”

“Thank you,” Dieter said, and released her.

She rushed inside.

Dieter nodded at Stéphanie, who followed her in and closed the door.

He could not conceal his satisfaction. “There, Hans, we make progress.”

Hans, too, was pleased. “The cathedral crypt, three p.m. any day, black and brown shoes, ‘Pray for me,' and the response ‘I pray for peace.' Very good!”

“When they come out, put the prisoner in a cell and turn her over to the Gestapo. They'll arrange for her to disappear into a camp somewhere.”

Hans nodded. “It seems harsh, sir. Her being an elderly lady, I mean.”

“It does—until you think of the German soldiers and French civilians killed by the terrorists she sheltered. Then it seems hardly punishment enough.”

“That does throw a different light on it, yes, sir.”

“You see how one thing leads to another,” Dieter said reflectively. “Gaston gives us a house, the house gives us Mademoiselle Lemas, she gives us the crypt, and the
crypt will give us . . . who knows?” He began to think about the best way to exploit the new information.

The challenge was to capture agents without letting London know. If the thing was handled right, the Allies would send more people along the same route, wasting vast resources. It had been done in Holland: more than fifty expensively trained saboteurs had parachuted straight into the arms of the Germans.

Ideally, the next agent sent by London would go to the crypt of the cathedral and find Mademoiselle Lemas waiting there. She would take the agent home, and he would send a wireless message to London saying all was well. Then, when he was out of the house, Dieter could get hold of his code books. After that, Dieter could arrest the agent but continue to send messages to London in his name—and read the replies. In effect, he would be running a Resistance circuit that was entirely fictional. It was a thrilling prospect.

Willi Weber walked by. “Well, Major, has the prisoner talked?”

“She has.”

“Not a moment too soon. Did she say anything useful?”

“You may tell your superiors that she has revealed the location of her rendezvous and the passwords used. We can pick up any further agents as they arrive.”

Weber looked interested despite his hostility. “And where is the rendezvous?”

Dieter hesitated. He would have preferred not to tell Weber anything. But it was difficult to refuse without giving offense, and he needed the man's help. He had to tell him. “The cathedral crypt, afternoons at three.”

“I shall inform Paris.” Weber walked on.

Dieter resumed thinking about his next step. The house in the rue du Bois was a cut-out. No one in the Bollinger circuit had met Mademoiselle Lemas. Agents coming in from London did not know what she looked like—hence the need for recognition signals and
passwords. If he could get someone to impersonate her . . . but who?

Stéphanie came out of the ladies' toilet with Mademoiselle Lemas.

She could do it.

She was much younger than Mademoiselle Lemas, and looked completely different, but the agents would not know that. She was obviously French. All she had to do was take care of the agent for a day or so.

He took Stéphanie's arm. “Hans will deal with the prisoner now. Come, let me buy you a glass of champagne.”

He walked her out of the château. In the square, the soldiers had done their work, and the three stakes threw long shadows in the evening light. A handful of local people stood silent and watchful outside the church door.

Dieter and Stéphanie went into the café. Dieter ordered a bottle of champagne. “Thank you for helping me today,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

“I love you,” she said. “And you love me, I know, even though you never say it.”

“But how do you feel about what we did today? You're French, and you have that grandmother whose race we mustn't speak of, and as far as I know you're not a Fascist.”

She shook her head violently. “I no longer believe in nationality, or race, or politics,” she said passionately. “When I was arrested by the Gestapo, no French people helped me. No Jews helped me. No socialists or liberals or communists either. And I was so cold in that prison.” Her face changed. Her lips lost the sexy half-smile she wore most of the time, and the glint of teasing invitation went from her eyes. She was looking at another scene in another time. She crossed her arms and shivered, although it was a warm summer evening. “Not just cold on the outside, not just the skin. I felt cold in my heart and my bowels and my bones. I felt I would never be warm again, I would just go cold to my
grave.” She was silent for a long moment, her face drawn and pale, and Dieter felt at that instant that war was a terrible thing. Then she said, “I'll never forget the fire in your apartment. A coal fire. I had forgotten what it was like to feel that blazing warmth. It made me human again.” She came out of her trance. “You saved me. You gave me food and wine. You bought me clothes.” She smiled her old smile, the one that said
You can, if you dare.
“And you loved me, in front of that coal fire.”