World War II Thriller Collection (71 page)

Flick stood there for a moment, frozen with shock. Maude saw her and met her eye. “Have you had a good look?” she said saucily. “Or do you want to take a photo?”

Diana jumped, snatching her hand away and stepping back from Maude. She turned around, and a look of horror came over her face. “Oh, my
God,
” she said. She pulled the front of her blouse together with one hand and covered her mouth with the other in a gesture of shame.

Flick stammered: “I-I-I just came to say we're leaving.” Then she turned around and stumbled out.

WIRELESS OPERATORS WERE
not quite invisible. They lived in a spirit world where their ghostly shapes could be dimly seen. Peering into the gloom, searching for them, were the men of the Gestapo's radio detection team, housed in a cavernous, darkened hall in Paris. Dieter had visited the place. Three hundred round oscilloscope screens flickered with a greenish light. Radio broadcasts appeared as vertical lines on the monitors, the position of the line showing the frequency of the transmission, the height indicating the strength of the signal. The screens were tended, day and night, by silent, watchful operators, who made him think of angels observing the sins of humankind.

The operators knew the regular stations, either German-controlled or foreign-based, and were able to spot a rogue instantly. As soon as this happened, the operator would pick up a telephone at his desk and call three tracking stations: two in southern Germany, at Augsburg and Nuremberg, and one in Brittany, at Brest. He would give them the frequency of the rogue broadcast. The tracking stations were equipped with goniometers, apparatus for measuring angles, and each could say within seconds which direction the broadcast was coming from. They would send this information back to Paris, where the operator would draw three lines on a huge wall map. The lines intersected where the suspect radio was located. The operator then telephoned the Gestapo office nearest to the location. The local
Gestapo had cars waiting in readiness, equipped with their own detection apparatus.

Dieter was now sitting in such a car, a long black Citroën parked on the outskirts of Reims. With him were three Gestapo men experienced in wireless detection. Tonight the help of the Paris center was not required: Dieter already knew the frequency Helicopter would use, and he assumed Helicopter would broadcast from somewhere in the city (because it was too difficult for a wireless operator to lose himself in the countryside). The car's receiver was tuned to Helicopter's frequency. It measured the strength, as well as the direction, of the broadcast, and Dieter would know he was getting nearer to the transmitter when the needle rose on the dial.

In addition, the Gestapo man sitting next to Dieter wore a receiver and an aerial concealed beneath his raincoat. On his wrist was a meter like a watch that showed the strength of the signal. When the search narrowed down to a particular street, city block, or building, the walker would take over.

The Gestapo man in the front seat held on his lap a sledgehammer, for breaking doors down.

Dieter had been hunting once. He did not much like country pursuits, preferring the more refined pleasures of city life, but he was a good shot. Now he was reminded of that, as he waited for Helicopter to begin sending his coded report home to England. This was like lying in the hide in the early dawn, tense with anticipation, impatient for the deer to start moving, savoring the thrill of anticipation.

The Resistance were not deer but foxes, Dieter thought, skulking in their holes, coming out to cause carnage in the chicken house, then going to earth again. He was mortified to have lost Helicopter. He was so keen to recapture the man that he hardly minded having to rely on the help of Willi Weber. He just wanted to kill the fox.

It was a fine summer evening. The car was parked at the northern end of the city. Reims was a small town,
and Dieter reckoned a car could drive from one side to the other in less than ten minutes.

He checked his watch: one minute past eight. Helicopter was late coming on air. Perhaps he would not broadcast tonight . . . but that was unlikely. Today Helicopter had met up with Michel. As soon as possible, he would want to report his success to his superiors, and tell them just how much was left of the Bollinger circuit.

Michel had phoned the house in the rue du Bois two hours ago. Dieter had been there. It was a tense moment. Stéphanie had answered, in her imitation of Mademoiselle Lemas's voice. Michel had given his code name, and asked whether “Bourgeoise” remembered him—a question that reassured Stéphanie, because it indicated that Michel did not know Mademoiselle Lemas very well and therefore would not realize this was an impersonator.

He had asked her about her new recruit, codenamed Charenton. “He's my cousin,” Stéphanie had said gruffly. “I've known him since we were children, I would trust him with my life.” Michel had told her she had no right to recruit people without at least discussing it with him, but he had appeared to believe her story, and Dieter had kissed Stéphanie and told her she was a good enough actor to join the Comédie Française.

All the same, Helicopter would know that the Gestapo would be listening and trying to find him. That was a risk he had to run: if he sent no messages home he was of no use. He would stay on air only for the minimum length of time. If he had a lot of information to send, he would break it into two or more messages and send them from different locations. Dieter's only hope was that he would be tempted to stay on the air just a little too long.

The minutes ticked by. There was silence in the car. The men smoked nervously. Then, at five past eight, the receiver beeped.

By prearrangement, the driver set off immediately, driving south.

The signal grew stronger, but slowly, making Dieter worry that they were not heading directly for the source.

Sure enough, as they passed the cathedral in the center of town, the needle fell back.

In the passenger seat, a Gestapo man talked into a short-wave radio. He was consulting with someone in a radio-detection truck a mile away. After a moment he said, “Northwest quarter.”

The driver immediately turned west, and the signal began to strengthen.

“Got you,” Dieter breathed.

But five minutes had elapsed.

The car raced west, and the signal strengthened, as Helicopter continued to tap on the Morse key of his suitcase radio in his hiding place—a bathroom, an attic, a warehouse—somewhere in the northwest of the city. Back at the château of Sainte-Cécile, a German radio operator had tuned to the same frequency and was taking down the coded message. It was also being registered on a wire recorder. Later, Dieter would decrypt it, using the one-time pad copied by Stéphanie. But the message was not as important as the messenger.

They entered a neighborhood of large old houses, mostly decrepit and subdivided into small apartments and bedsitting rooms for students and nurses. The signal grew louder, then suddenly began to fade. “Overshoot, overshoot!” said the Gestapo man in the front passenger seat. The driver reversed the car, then braked.

Ten minutes had passed.

Dieter and the three Gestapo men sprang out. The one with the portable detection unit under his raincoat walked rapidly along the pavement, consulting his wrist dial constantly, and the others followed. He went a hundred meters, then suddenly turned back. He stopped and pointed to a house. “That one,” he said. “But the transmission has ended.”

Dieter noticed that there were no curtains in the windows. The Resistance liked to use derelict houses for their transmissions.

The Gestapo man carrying the sledgehammer broke the door down with two blows. They all rushed in.

The floors were bare and the place had a musty smell. Dieter threw open a door and looked into an empty room.

Dieter opened the door of the back room. He crossed the vacant room in three strides and looked into an abandoned kitchen.

He ran up the stairs. On the next floor was a window overlooking a long back garden. Dieter glanced out—and saw Helicopter and Michel running across the grass. Michel was limping, Helicopter was carrying his little suitcase. Dieter swore. They must have escaped through a back door as the Gestapo were breaking down the front. Dieter turned and yelled, “Back garden!” The Gestapo men ran and he followed.

As he reached the garden, he saw Michel and Helicopter scrambling over the back fence into the grounds of another house. He joined in the chase, but the fugitives had a long lead. With the three Gestapo men, he climbed the fence and ran through the second garden.

They reached the next street just in time to see a black Renault Monaquatre disappearing around the corner.

“Hell,” Dieter said. For the second time in a day, Helicopter had slipped through his grasp.

WHEN THEY GOT
back to the house, Flick made cocoa for the team. It was not regular practice for officers to make cocoa for their troops, but in Flick's opinion that only showed how little the army knew about leadership.

Paul stood in the kitchen watching her as she waited for the kettle to boil. She felt his eyes on her like a caress. She knew what he was going to say, and she had prepared her reply. It would have been easy to fall in love with Paul, but she was not going to betray the husband who was risking his life fighting the Nazis in occupied France.

However, his question surprised her. “What will you do after the war?”

“I'm looking forward to being bored,” she said.

He laughed. “You've had enough excitement.”

“Too much.” She thought for a moment. “I still want to be a teacher. I'd like to share my love of French culture with young people. Educate them about French literature and painting, and also about less highbrow things like cooking and fashion.”

“So you'll become a don?”

“Finish my doctorate, get a job at a university, be condescended to by narrow-minded old male professors. Maybe write a guide book to France, or even a cookbook.”

“Sounds tame, after this.”

“It's important, though. The more young people know about foreigners, the less likely they are to be as stupid as we were, and go to war with their neighbors.”

“I wonder if that's right.”

“What about you? What's your plan for after the war?”

“Oh, mine is real simple. I want to marry you and take you to Paris for a honeymoon. Then we'll settle down and have children.”

She stared at him. “Were you thinking of asking my consent?” she said indignantly.

He was quite solemn. “I haven't thought of anything else for days.”

“I already have a husband.”

“But you don't love him.”

“You have no right to say that!”

“I know, but I can't help it.”

“Why did I used to think you were a smooth talker?”

“Usually I am. That kettle's boiling.”

She took the kettle off the hob and poured boiling water over the cocoa mixture in a big stoneware jug. “Put some mugs on a tray,” she told Paul. “A little housework might cure you of dreams of domesticity.”

He complied. “You can't put me off by being bossy,” he said. “I kind of like it.”

She added milk and sugar to the cocoa and poured it into the mugs he had laid out. “In that case, carry that tray into the living room.”

“Right away, boss.”

When they entered the living room they found Jelly and Greta having a row, standing face to face in the middle of the room while the others looked on, half amused and half horrified.

Jelly was saying, “You weren't using it!”

“I was resting my feet on it,” Greta replied.

“There aren't enough chairs.” Jelly was holding a small stuffed pouffe, and Flick guessed she had snatched it away from Greta rudely.

Flick said, “Ladies, please!”

They ignored her. Greta said, “You only had to ask, sweetheart.”

“I don't have to ask permission from foreigners in my own country.”

“I'm not a foreigner, you fat bitch.”

“Oh!” Jelly was so stung by the insult that she reached out and pulled Greta's hair. Greta's brunette wig came off in her hand.

With her head of close-cropped dark hair exposed, Greta suddenly looked unmistakably like a man. Percy and Paul were in on the secret, and Ruby had guessed, but Maude and Diana were shocked rigid. Diana said, “Good God!” and Maude gave a little scream of fright.

Jelly was the first to recover her wits. “A pervert!” she said triumphantly. “Oh, my gordon, it's a foreign pervert!”

Greta was in tears. “You bloody fucking Nazi,” she sobbed.

“I bet she's a spy!” Jelly said.

Flick said, “Shut up, Jelly. She's not a spy. I knew she was a man.”

“You knew!”

“So did Paul. So did Percy.”

Jelly looked at Percy, who nodded solemnly.

Greta turned to leave, but Flick caught her arm. “Don't go,” she said. “Please. Sit down.”

Greta sat down.

“Jelly, give me the damn wig.”

Jelly handed it to Flick.

Flick stood in front of Greta and put the wig back on. Ruby, quickly understanding what Flick was trying to do, lifted the mirror from over the mantelpiece and held it in front of Greta, who studied her reflection while she adjusted the wig and blotted her tears with a handkerchief.

“Now listen to me, all of you,” said Flick. “Greta is an engineer, and we can't accomplish our mission without an engineer. We have a much better chance of survival in occupied territory as an all-woman team. The upshot is, we need Greta and we need her to be a woman. So get used to it.”

Jelly gave a contemptuous grunt.

“There's something else I ought to explain,” Flick
said. She looked hard at Jelly. “You may have noticed that Denise is no longer with us. A little test was set for her tonight, and she failed it. She's off the team. Unfortunately, she's learned some secrets in the last two days, and she can't be allowed to return to her old posting. So she's gone to a remote base in Scotland, where she'll stay, probably for the rest of the war, with no leave.”

Jelly said, “You can't do that!”

“Of course I can, you idiot,” Flick said impatiently. “There's a war on, remember? And what I've done to Denise, I'll do to anyone who has to be fired from this team.”

“I never even joined the army!” Jelly protested.

“Yes, you did. You were commissioned as an officer, yesterday, after tea. You all were. And you're getting officer's pay, although you haven't seen any yet. That means you're under military discipline. And you all know too much.”

“So we're prisoners?” Diana said.

“You're in the army,” Flick said. “It's much the same thing. So drink your cocoa and go to bed.”

They drifted off one by one until only Diana was left. Flick had been expecting this. Seeing the two women in a sexual clinch had been a real shock. She recalled that at school some of the girls had developed crushes on one another, sending loving notes, holding hands, and sometimes even kissing; but as far as she knew it had not gone any further. At some point she and Diana had practiced French kissing on one another, so that they would know what to do when they got boyfriends, and now Flick guessed those kisses had meant more to Diana than they had to her. But she had never known a grown woman who desired other women. Theoretically, she was aware that they existed, the female equivalents of her brother Mark and of Greta, but she had never really imagined them . . . well, feeling each other up in a garden shed.

Did it matter? Not in everyday life. Mark and his kind were happy, or at least they were when people left them
alone. But would Diana's relationship with Maude affect the mission? Not necessarily. Flick herself worked with her husband in the Resistance, after all. This was not quite the same, admittedly. A passionate new romance might prove a distraction.

Flick could try to keep the two lovers separate—but that might make Diana even more insubordinate. And the affair could just as easily be an inspiration. Flick had been trying desperately to get the women to work together as a team, and this might help. She had decided to leave well enough alone. But Diana wanted to talk.

“It's not what it seems, really it isn't,” Diana said without preamble. “Christ, you've got to believe me. It was just a stupid thing, a joke—”

“Would you like more cocoa?” Flick said. “I think there's some left in the jug.”

Diana stared at her, nonplussed. After a moment she said, “How can you talk about cocoa?”

“I just want you to calm down and realize that the world is not going to come to an end simply because you kissed Maude. You kissed me, once—remember?”

“I knew you'd bring that up. But that was just kid stuff. With Maude, it wasn't just a kiss.” Diana sat down. Her proud face crumpled and she began to cry. “You know it was more than that, you could see, oh, God, the things I did. What on earth did you think?”

Flick chose her words carefully. “I thought the two of you looked very sweet.”

“Sweet?” Diana was incredulous. “You weren't disgusted?”

“Certainly not. Maude is a pretty girl, and you appear to have fallen in love with her.”

“That's exactly what happened.”

“So stop being ashamed.”

“How can I not be ashamed? I'm queer!”

“I wouldn't look at it that way if I were you. You ought to be discreet, to avoid offending narrow-minded people such as Jelly, but there's no need for shame.”

“Will I always be like this?”

Flick considered. The answer was probably yes, but she did not want to be brutal. “Look,” she said, “I think some people, like Maude, just love to be loved, and they can be made happy by a man or a woman.” In truth, Maude was shallow, selfish, and tarty, but Flick suppressed that thought firmly. “Others are more inflexible,” she went on. “You should keep an open mind.”

“I suppose that's the end of the mission for me and Maude.”

“It most certainly is not.”

“You'll still take us?”

“I still need you. And I don't see why this should make any difference.”

Diana took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. Flick got up and went to the window, giving her time to recover her composure. After a minute, Diana spoke in a calmer voice. “You're frightfully kind,” she said with a touch of her old hauteur.

“Go to bed,” Flick said.

Diana got up obediently.

“And if I were you . . .”

“What?”

“I'd go to bed with Maude.”

Diana looked shocked.

Flick shrugged. “It may be your last chance,” she said.

“Thank you,” Diana whispered. She stepped toward Flick and spread her arms, as if to hug her; then she stopped. “You may not want me to kiss you,” she said.

“Don't be silly,” Flick said, and embraced her.

“Goodnight,” said Diana. She left the room.

Flick turned and looked out at the garden. The moon was three-quarters full. In a few days' time it would be full, and the Allies would invade France. A wind was disturbing the new leaves in the forest: the weather was going to change. She hoped there would not be a storm in the English Channel. The entire invasion plan could be ruined by the capricious British
climate. She guessed a lot of people were praying for good weather.

She ought to get some sleep. She left the room and climbed the stairs. She thought of what she had said to Diana:
I'd go to bed with Maude. It may be your last chance.
She hesitated outside Paul's door. It was different for Diana—she was single. Flick was married.

But it might be her last chance.

She knocked at the door and stepped inside.

SUNK IN GLOOM,
Dieter returned to the château at Sainte-Cécile in the Citroën with the radio detection team. He went to the wireless listening room in the bombproofed basement. Willi Weber was there, looking angry. The one consolation from tonight's fiasco, Dieter thought, was that Weber was not able to crow that he had succeeded where Dieter had failed. But Dieter could have put up with all the triumphalism Weber could muster in return for having Helicopter in the torture chamber.

“You have the message he sent?” Dieter asked.

Weber handed him a carbon copy of the typed message. “It has already been sent to the cryptanalysis office in Berlin.”

Dieter looked at the meaningless strings of letters. “They won't be able to decode it. He's using a one-time pad.” He folded the sheet and slipped it into his pocket.

“What can you do with it?” Weber said.

“I have a copy of his code book,” Dieter said. It was a petty victory, but he felt better.

Weber swallowed. “The message may tell us where he is.”

“Yes. He's scheduled to receive a reply at eleven p.m.” He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before eleven. “Let's record that, and I will decrypt the two together.”

Weber left. Dieter waited in the windowless room. On the dot of eleven, a receiver tuned to Helicopter's listening frequency began to chatter with the
long-and-short beeps of Morse. An operator wrote the letters down while at the same time a wire recorder ran. When the chattering stopped, the operator pulled a typewriter toward him and typed out what he had on his notepad. He gave Dieter a carbon copy.