World War II Thriller Collection (75 page)

DIETER LAY BENEATH
a hedge and watched, bewildered, while the British plane circled over the cow pasture.

Why the delay? The pilot had made two passes over the landing site. The flare path, such as it was, was in place. Had the reception leader flashed the wrong code? Had the Gestapo men done something to arouse suspicion? It was maddening. Felicity Clairet was a few yards away from him. If he fired his pistol at the plane, a lucky shot might hit her.

Then the plane banked, turned, and roared away to the south.

Dieter was mortified. Flick Clairet had evaded him—in front of Walter Goedel, Willi Weber, and twenty Gestapo men.

For a moment, he buried his face in his hands.

What had gone wrong? There could be a dozen reasons. As the drone of the plane's engines receded, Dieter could hear shouts of indignation in French. The Resistance seemed as perplexed as he was. His best guess was that Flick, an experienced team leader, had smelled a rat and aborted the jump.

Walter Goedel, lying in the dirt beside him, said, “What are you going to do now?”

Dieter considered briefly. There were four Resistance people here: Michel the leader, still limping from his bullet wound; Helicopter, the British radio operator; a Frenchman Dieter did not recognize, and a young woman. What should he do with them? His strategy of
letting Helicopter run free had been a good one in theory, but it had now led to two humiliating reverses, and he did not have the nerve to continue it. He had to get something out of tonight's fiasco. He was going to have to revert to traditional methods of interrogation and hope to salvage the operation—and his reputation.

He brought the mouthpiece of the shortwave radio to his lips. “All units, this is Major Franck,” he said softly. “Action, I repeat, action.” Then he got to his feet and drew his automatic pistol.

The searchlights concealed in the trees blazed into life. The four terrorists in the middle of the field were mercilessly lit up, looking suddenly bewildered and vulnerable. Dieter called out in French, “You are surrounded! Raise your hands!”

Beside him, Goedel drew his Luger. The four Gestapo men with Dieter aimed their rifles at the legs of the Resistance people. There was a moment of uncertainty: Would the Resistance open fire? If they did, they would be mowed down. With luck, they might be only wounded. But Dieter had not had much luck tonight. And if these four were killed, he would be left empty-handed.

They hesitated.

Dieter stepped forward, moving into the light, and the four riflemen moved with him. “Twenty guns are aimed at you,” he shouted. “Do not draw your weapons.”

One of them started to run.

Dieter swore. He saw a flash of red hair in the lights: it was Helicopter, stupid boy, heading across the field like a charging bull. “Shoot him,” Dieter said quietly. All four riflemen took careful aim and fired. The shots crashed out in the silent meadow. Helicopter ran another two paces, then fell to the ground.

Dieter looked at the other three, waiting. Slowly, they raised their hands in the air.

Dieter spoke into the shortwave radio. “All teams in the pasture, move in and secure the prisoners.” He put away his pistol.

He walked over to where Helicopter lay. The body was still. The Gestapo riflemen had shot at his legs, but it was hard to hit a moving target in the dark, and one of them had aimed too high, putting a bullet through his neck, severing his spinal cord, or his jugular vein, or both. Dieter knelt beside him and felt for a pulse, but there was none. “You weren't the cleverest agent I've ever met, but you were a brave boy,” he said quietly. “God rest your soul.” He closed the eyes.

He looked over the other three as they were disarmed and fettered. Michel would resist interrogation well: Dieter had seen him in action, and he had courage. His weakness was probably vanity. He was handsome, and a womanizer. The way to torture him would be in front of a mirror: break his nose, knock out his teeth, scar his cheeks, make him understand that with every minute that he continued to resist, he was getting irreversibly uglier.

The other man had the air of a professional, perhaps a lawyer. A Gestapo man searched him and showed Dieter a pass that permitted Dr. Claude Bouler to be out after curfew. Dieter assumed it was a forgery, but when they searched the Resistance cars they found a genuine doctor's bag, full of instruments and drugs. Under arrest he looked pale but composed: he, too, would be a difficult subject.

The girl was the most promising. She was about nineteen, and pretty, with long dark hair and big eyes, but she had a vacant look. Her papers showed that she was Gilberte Duval. Dieter knew from his interrogation of Gaston that Gilberte was the lover of Michel and the rival of Flick. Handled correctly, she might prove easy to turn.

The German vehicles were brought from the barn at La Maison Grandin. The prisoners went in a truck with the Gestapo men. Dieter gave orders that they should be kept in separate cells and prevented from communicating with one another.

He and Goedel were driven back to Sainte-Cécile in
Weber's Mercedes. “What a damned farce,” Weber said scornfully. “A complete waste of time and manpower.”

“Not quite,” said Dieter. “We have taken four subversive agents out of circulation—which is, after all, what the Gestapo is supposed to do—and, even better, three of them are still alive for interrogation.”

Goedel said, “What do you hope to get from them?”

“The dead man, Helicopter, was a wireless operator,” Dieter explained. “I have a copy of his code book. Unfortunately, he did not have his set with him. If we can find the set, we can impersonate Helicopter.”

“Surely you can use any radio transmitter, so long as you know the frequency assigned to him?”

Dieter shook his head. “Every transmitter sounds different to the experienced ear. And these little suitcase radios are particularly distinctive. All nonessential circuits are omitted, to minimize the size, and the result is poor tone quality. If we had one exactly like his, captured from another agent, it might be similar enough to take the risk.”

“We may have one somewhere.”

“If we do, it will be in Berlin. It's easier to find Helicopter's.”

“How will you do that?”

“The girl will tell me where it is.”

For the rest of the journey, Dieter brooded over his interrogation strategy. He could torture the girl in front of the men, but they might resist that. More promising would be to torture the men in front of the girl. But there might be an easier way.

A plan was forming in his mind when they passed the public library in the center of Reims. He had noticed the building before. It was a little jewel, an art deco design in tan stone, standing in a small garden. “Would you mind stopping the car for a moment, please, Major Weber?” he said.

Weber muttered an order to his driver.

“Do you have any tools in the trunk?”

“I have no idea,” said Weber. “What is this about?”

The driver said, “Of course, Major, we have the regulation tool kit.”

“Is there a good-sized hammer?”

“Yes.” The driver jumped out.

“This won't take a moment,” Dieter said. He got out of the car.

The driver handed him a long-handled hammer with a chunky steel head. Dieter walked past a bust of Andrew Carnegie up to the library. The place was closed and dark, of course. The glass doors were protected by an elaborate wrought-iron grille. He walked around to the side of the building and found a basement entrance with a plain wood door marked Archives Municipales.

Dieter swung at the door with the hammer, hitting the lock. It broke after four blows. He went inside, turning on the lights. He ran up a narrow staircase to the main floor and crossed the lobby to the fiction section. There he located the letter F for Flaubert and picked out a copy of the book he was looking for,
Madame Bovary.
It was not particularly lucky: that was the one book that must be available in every library in the country.

He turned to chapter nine and located the passage he was thinking about. He had remembered it accurately. It would serve his purpose very well.

He returned to the car. Goedel was looking amused. Weber said incredulously, “You needed something to read?”

“Sometimes I find it difficult to get to sleep,” Dieter replied.

Goedel laughed. He took the book from Dieter and read its title. “A classic of world literature,” he said. “All the same, I imagine that's the first time someone broke down the library door to borrow it.”

They drove on to Sainte-Cécile. By the time they reached the château, Dieter's plan was fully formed.

He ordered Lieutenant Hesse to prepare Michel by stripping him naked and tying him to a chair in the torture chamber. “Show him the instrument used for pulling out fingernails,” he said. “Leave it on the table in
front of him.” While that was being done, he got a pen, a bottle of ink, and a pad of letter paper from the offices on the upper floor. Walter Goedel ensconced himself in a corner of the torture chamber to watch.

Dieter studied Michel for a few moments. The Resistance leader was a tall man, with attractive wrinkles around his eyes. He had a kind of bad-boy look that women liked. Now he was scared but determined. He was thinking grimly about how to hold out as long as possible against torture, Dieter guessed.

Dieter put the pen, ink, and paper on the table next to the fingernail pliers, to show that they were alternatives. “Untie his hands,” he said.

Hesse complied. Michel's face showed enormous relief combined with a fear that this might not be real.

Dieter explained to Walter Goedel, “Before questioning the prisoners, I will take samples of their handwriting.”

“Their handwriting?”

Dieter nodded, watching Michel, who seemed to have understood the brief exchange in German. He looked hopeful.

Dieter took
Madame Bovary
from his pocket, opened it, and put it down on the table. “Copy out chapter nine,” he said to Michel in French.

Michel hesitated. It seemed a harmless request. He suspected a trick, Dieter could tell, but he could not see what it was. Dieter waited. The Resistance were told to do everything they could to put off the moment when torture began. Michel was bound to see this as a means of postponement. It was unlikely to be harmless, but it had to be better than having his fingernails pulled out. “Very well,” he said after a long pause. He began writing.

Dieter watched him. His handwriting was large and flamboyant. Two pages of the printed book took up six sheets of the letter paper. When Michel turned the page, Dieter stopped him. He told Hans to return Michel to his cell and bring Gilberte.

Goedel looked over what Michel had written, and
shook his head bemusedly. “I can't figure out what you're up to,” he said. He handed the sheets back and returned to his chair.

Dieter tore one of the pages very carefully to leave only certain words.

Gilberte came in looking terrified but defiant. She said, “I won't tell you anything. I will never betray my friends. Besides, I don't know anything. All I do is drive cars.”

Dieter told her to sit down and offered her coffee. “The real thing,” he said as he handed her a cup. French people could get only ersatz coffee.

She sipped it and thanked him.

Dieter studied her. She was quite beautiful, with long dark hair and dark eyes, although there was something bovine about her expression. “You're a lovely woman, Gilberte,” he said. “I don't believe you are a murderer at heart.”

“No, I'm not!” she said gratefully.

“A woman does things for love, doesn't she?”

She looked at him with surprise. “You understand.”

“I know all about you. You are in love with Michel.”

She bowed her head without replying.

“A married man, of course. This is regrettable. But you love him. And that's why you help the Resistance. Out of love, not hate.”

She nodded.

“Am I right?” he said. “You must answer.”

She whispered, “Yes.”

“But you have been misguided, my dear.”

“I know I've done wrong—”

“You misunderstand me. You've been misguided, not just in breaking the law but in loving Michel.”

She looked at him in puzzlement. “I know he's married, but—”

“I'm afraid he doesn't really love you.”

“But he does!”

“No. He loves his wife. Felicity Clairet, known as Flick. An Englishwoman—not chic, not very beautiful, some years older than you—but he loves her.”

Tears came to her eyes, and she said, “I don't believe you.”

“He writes to her, you know. I imagine he gets the couriers to take his messages back to England. He sends her love letters, saying how much he misses her. They're rather poetic, in an old-fashioned way. I've read some.”