World War II Thriller Collection (69 page)

DIETER SLEPT A
few hours at the Hotel Frankfort and got up at two a.m. He was alone: Stéphanie was at the house in the rue du Bois with the British agent Helicopter. Some time this morning, Helicopter would go in search of the head of the Bollinger circuit, and Dieter had to follow him. He knew Helicopter would start at Michel Clairet's house, so he had decided to put a surveillance team there by first light.

He drove to Sainte-Cécile in the early hours, winding through the moonlit vineyards in his big car, and parked in front of the château. He went first to the photo lab in the basement. There was no one in the darkroom, but his prints were there, pegged on a line to dry like laundry. He had asked for two copies of Helicopter's picture of Flick Clairet. He took them off the line and studied one, remembering the way she had run through gunfire to rescue her husband. He tried to see some of that steely nerve in the carefree expression of the pretty girl in the swimsuit, but there was no sign of it. No doubt it had come with war.

He pocketed the negative and picked up the original photo, which would have to be returned surreptitiously to Helicopter. He found an envelope and a sheet of plain paper, thought for a moment, and wrote:

 

My darling,

While Helicopter is shaving, please put this in his inside jacket pocket, so that it will look as if it slipped out of his wallet. Thank you.

D.

He put the note and the picture in the envelope, sealed it, and wrote: “Mlle. Lemas” on the front. He would drop it off later.

He passed the cells and looked through a judas at Marie, the girl who had surprised him yesterday by showing up at the house in the rue du Bois with food for Mademoiselle Lemas's “guests.” She lay on a bloodstained sheet, staring at the wall with a wide-eyed gaze of horror, emitting a constant low moan like a piece of machinery that was broken but not switched off.

Dieter had interrogated Marie last night. She had had no useful information. She had claimed she knew no one in the Resistance, only Mademoiselle Lemas. Dieter had been inclined to believe her, but he had let Sergeant Becker torture her just in case. However, she had not changed her story, and he now felt confident that her disappearance would not alert the Resistance to the impostor in the rue du Bois.

He suffered a moment of depression as he stared at the wrecked body. He remembered her coming up the path yesterday with her bicycle, a picture of vigorous health. She had been a happy girl, albeit foolish. She had made a simple mistake, and now her life was coming to a ghastly end. She deserved her fate, of course; she had helped terrorists. All the same, it was horrible to contemplate.

He put her out of his mind and went up the stairs. On the ground floor, the night shift telephonists were at their switchboards. Above that, on what had once been a floor of impossibly grand bedrooms, were the Gestapo offices.

Dieter had not seen Weber since the fiasco in the cathedral and assumed the man was licking his wounds somewhere. However, he had spoken to Weber's deputy and asked for four Gestapo men to be here in plain clothes at three a.m. ready for a day's surveillance. Dieter had also ordered Lieutenant Hesse to be here. Now he pulled aside a blackout blind and looked out. Moonlight illuminated the parking lot, and he
could see Hans walking across the yard, but there was no sign of anyone else.

He went to Weber's office and was surprised to find him there alone, behind his desk, pretending to work on some papers by the light of a green-shaded lamp. “Where are the men I asked for?” Dieter said.

Weber stood up. “You pulled a gun on me yesterday,” he said. “What the devil do you mean by threatening an officer?”

Dieter had not expected this. Weber was being aggressive about an incident in which he had made a fool of himself. Was it possible that he did not understand what a dreadful mistake he had made? “It was your own damn fault, you idiot,” Dieter said in exasperation. “I didn't want that man arrested.”

“You can be court-martialed for what you did.”

Dieter was about to ridicule the idea; then he stopped himself. It was true, he realized. He had simply done what was necessary to rescue the situation; but it was not impossible, in the bureaucratic Third Reich, for an officer to be arraigned for using his initiative. His heart sank, and he had to feign confidence. “Go ahead, report me, I think I can justify myself in front of a tribunal.”

“You actually fired your gun!”

Dieter could not resist saying, “I suppose that's something you haven't often witnessed, in your military career.”

Weber flushed. He had never seen action. “Guns should be used against the enemy, not fellow officers.”

“I fired into the air. I'm sorry if I frightened you. You were in the process of ruining a first-class counterintelligence coup. Don't you think a military court would take that into account? What orders were
you
following? You were the one who showed lack of discipline.”

“I arrested a British terrorist spy.”

“And what's the point of that? He's just one. They have plenty more. But, left to go free, he will lead us to others—perhaps many others. Your insubordination would have destroyed that chance. Fortunately for you, I saved you from a ghastly error.”

Weber looked sly. “Certain people in authority would find it highly suspicious that you're so keen to free an Allied agent.”

Dieter sighed. “Don't be stupid. I'm not some wretched Jewish shopkeeper, to be frightened by the threat of malicious gossip. You can't pretend I'm a traitor, no one will believe you. Now, where are my men?”

“The spy must be arrested immediately.”

“No, he mustn't, and if you try I'll shoot you. Where are the men?”

“I refuse to assign much-needed men to such an irresponsible task.”

“You
refuse?
”

“Yes.”

Dieter stared at him. He had not thought Weber brave enough or foolish enough to do this. “What do you imagine will happen to you when the Field Marshal hears about this?”

Weber looked scared but defiant. “I am not in the army,” he said. “This is the Gestapo.”

Unfortunately, he was right, Dieter thought despondently. It was all very well for Walter Goedel to order Dieter to use Gestapo personnel instead of taking much-needed fighting troops from the coast, but the Gestapo were not obliged to take orders from Dieter. The name of Rommel had frightened Weber for a while, but the effect had worn off.

And now Dieter was left with no staff but Lieutenant Hesse. Could he and Hans manage the shadowing of Helicopter without assistance? It would be difficult, but there was no alternative.

He tried one more threat. “Are you sure you're willing to bear the consequences of this refusal, Willi? You're going to get into the most dreadful trouble.”

“On the contrary, I think it is you who are in trouble.”

Dieter shook his head in despair. There was no more to be said. He had already spent too much time arguing with this idiot. He went out.

He met Hans in the hall and explained the situation. They went to the back of the château, where the engineering section was housed in the former servants' quarters. Last night Hans had arranged to borrow a PTT van and a moped, the kind of motorized bicycle whose small engine was started by pedaling.

Dieter wondered whether Weber might have found out about the vehicles and ordered the engineers not to lend them. He hoped not: dawn was due in half an hour, and he did not have time for more arguments. But there was no trouble. Dieter and Hans put on overalls and drove away, with the moped in the back of the van.

They went to Reims and drove along the rue du Bois. They parked around the corner and Hans walked back, in the faint light of dawn, and put the envelope containing the photo of Flick into the letter box. Helicopter's bedroom was at the back, so there was no serious risk that he might see Hans, and recognize him later.

The sun was rising when they arrived outside Michel Clairet's house in the center of town. Hans parked a hundred meters down the road and opened a PTT manhole. He pretended to be working while watching the house. It was a busy street with numerous parked vehicles, so the van was not conspicuous.

Dieter stayed in the van, keeping out of sight, brooding over the row with Weber. The man was stupid, but he had a point. Dieter was taking a dangerous risk. Helicopter could give him the slip and disappear. Then Dieter would have lost the thread. The safe and easy course would be to torture Helicopter. But though letting him go was risky, it promised rich rewards. If things went right, Helicopter could be solid gold. When Dieter thought of the triumph that hung just beyond his grasp, he lusted for it with a passion that made his pulse race.

On the other hand, if things went wrong, Weber would make the most of it. He would tell everyone how he had opposed Dieter's risky plan. But Dieter would not allow himself to worry about such bureaucratic
point-scoring. Men such as Weber, who played those games, were the most contemptible people on earth.

The town came slowly to life. First to appear were the women walking to the bakery opposite Michel's house. The shop was closed, but they stood patiently outside, waiting and talking. Bread was rationed, but Dieter guessed it sometimes ran out anyway, so dutiful housewives shopped early to make sure they got their share. When eventually the doors opened, they all tried to get in at once—unlike German housewives, who would have formed an orderly queue, Dieter thought with a feeling of superiority. When he saw them come out with their loaves, he wished he had eaten some breakfast.

After that, the working men appeared in their boots and berets, each carrying a bag or cheap fiber case containing his lunch. The children were just beginning to set out for school when Helicopter appeared, pedaling the bicycle that had belonged to Marie. Dieter sat upright. In the bicycle's basket was a rectangular object covered with a rag: the suitcase radio, Dieter guessed.

Hans put his head up out of the manhole and watched.

Helicopter went to Michel's door and knocked. There was no reply, of course. He stood on the step for a while, then looked in at the windows, then walked up and down the street looking for a back entrance. There was none, Dieter knew.

Dieter had suggested to Helicopter what to do next. “Go to the bar along the street, Chez Régis. Order coffee and rolls, and wait.” Dieter's hope was that the Resistance might be watching Michel's house, alert for an emissary from London. He did not expect full-time surveillance, but perhaps a sympathetic neighbor might have agreed to keep an eye on the place. Helicopter's evident guilelessness would reassure such a watcher. Anyone could tell, just by the way he walked around, that he was not a Gestapo man or an agent of the Milice, the French security police. Dieter felt sure that somehow the Resistance would be alerted, and before
too long someone would show up and speak to Helicopter—and
that
person might lead Dieter to the heart of the Resistance.

A minute later Helicopter did as Dieter had suggested. He wheeled his bicycle along the street to the bar and sat at a pavement table, apparently enjoying the sunshine. He got a cup of coffee. It had to be ersatz, made with roasted grain, but he drank it with apparent relish.

After twenty minutes or so he got another coffee and a newspaper from inside. He began to read the paper thoroughly. He had a patient air, as if he was prepared to wait all day. That was good.

The morning wore on. Dieter began to wonder whether this was going to work. Maybe the Bollinger circuit had been so decimated by the slaughter at Sainte-Cécile that it was no longer operational, and there was no one left to perform even the most essential tasks. It would be a profound disappointment if Helicopter did not lead him to other terrorists. And it would please Weber no end.

The time approached when Helicopter would have to order lunch to justify continuing to use the table. A waiter came out and spoke to him, then brought him a pastis. That, too, would be ersatz, made with a synthetic substitute for aniseed, but all the same Dieter licked his lips: he would have liked a drink.

Another customer sat down at the table next to Helicopter's. There were five tables, and it would have been natural to take one farther away. Dieter's hopes rose. The newcomer was a long-limbed man in his thirties. He wore a blue chambray shirt and navy canvas trousers, but to Dieter's intuition he did not have the air of a workingman. He was something else, perhaps an artist who affected a proletarian look. He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, resting his right ankle on his left knee, and the pose struck Dieter as familiar. Had he seen this man before?

The waiter came out and the customer ordered
something. For a minute or so nothing happened. Was the man covertly studying Helicopter? Or just waiting for his drink? The waiter brought a glass of pale beer on a tray. The man took a long pull and wiped his mouth with a satisfied air. Dieter began to think gloomily that he was just a man with a thirst. But at the same time he felt he had seen that mouth-wiping gesture before.

Then the newcomer spoke to Helicopter.

Dieter tensed. Could this be what he had been waiting for?