Jackdaws

Jackdaws Page 41

IT TOOK THE Jackdaws most of the day to get from Paris to Reims.

They passed through all the checkpoints without incident.

Their new fake identities worked as well as the old, and no one noticed that Flick's photograph had been retouched with eyebrow pencil.

But their train was delayed repeatedly, stopping for an hour at a time in the middle of nowhere.

Flick sat in the hot carriage fuming with impatience as the precious minutes leaked away uselessly.

She could see the reason for the holdups: half the track had been destroyed by the bombers of the U.S.

Army Air Corps and the RAE When the train chugged into life and moved forward, they looked out of the windows and saw emergency repair crews cutting through twisted rails, picking up smashed sleepers, and laying new track.

Her only consolation was that the delays would be even more maddening for Rommel as he attempted to deploy his troops to repel the invasion.

There was a feeling in her chest like a cold, inert lump, and every few minutes her thoughts returned to Diana and Maude.

They had certainly been interrogated by now, probably tortured, possibly killed.

Flick had known Diana all her life.

She was going to have to tell Diana's brother, William, what had happened.

Flick's own mother would be almost as upset as William.

Ma had helped raise Diana.

They began to see vineyards, then champagne warehouses alongside the track, and at last they arrived in Reims a few minutes after four on Sunday afternoon.

As Flick had feared, it was too late to carry out their mission the same evening.

That meant another nerve-racking twenty-four hours in occupied territory.

It also gave Flick a more specific problem: Where would the Jackdaws spend the night? This was not Paris.

There was no red-light district with disreputable flophouses whose proprietors asked few questions, and flick did not know of a convent where the nuns would hide anyone who begged for sanctuary.

There were no dark alleys in which down-and-outs slept behind rubbish bins ignored by the police.

Flick knew of three possible hideouts: Michel's town house, Gilberte's apartment, and Mademoiselle Lemas's house in the rue du Bois.

Unfortunately, any of them might be under surveillance, depending on how deeply the Gestapo had penetrated the Bollinger circuit.

If Dieter Franck was in charge of the investigation, she had to fear the worst.

There was nothing to do but go and look.

"We must split up into pairs again," she told the others.

"Four women together is too conspicuous.

Ruby and I will go first.

Greta and Jelly, follow a hundred meters behind us." They walked to Michel's place, not far from the station.

It was flick's marital home, but she always thought of it as his house.

There was plenty of room for four women.

But the Gestapo almost certainly knew of the place: it would be astonishing if none of the men taken captive last Sunday had revealed the address under torture.

The house was in a busy street with several shops.

Walking along the pavement, Flick surreptitiously looked into each parked car while Ruby checked the houses and shops.

Michel's property was a high, narrow building in an elegant eighteenth-century row.

It had a small front yard with a magnolia tree.

The place was still and quiet, with no movement at the windows.

The doorstep was dusty.

On their first pass along the street, they saw nothing suspicious: no workmen digging up the road, no watchful loiterers at the pavement tables outside the bar, Chez Regis, no one leaning on a telegraph pole reading a newspaper.

They returned on the opposite side.

Outside the baker's shop was a black CitroensTraction Avant with two men in suits sitting in the front, smoking cigarettes and looking bored.

Flick tensed.

She was wearing her dark wig, so she felt sure they would not recognize her as the girl on the Wanted poster, but all the same her pulse beat faster and she hurried past them.

All along the pavement she listened for a shout behind her, but it did not come, and at last she turned the corner and breathed easier.

She slowed her pace.

Her fears had been justified.

Michel's house was no use to her.

It did not have a rear entrance, being part of a row with no back alley.

The Jackdaws could not enter without being seen by the Gestapo.

She considered the other two possibilities.

Michel was presumably still living at Gilberte's apartment, unless he had been captured.

The building had a useful back entrance.

But it was a tiny place, and four overnight guests at a one-room apartment would not only be uncomfortable but also might be noticed by other people in the building.

The obvious place for them to spend the night was the house in the rue du Bois.

Flick had been there twice.

It was a big house with lots of bedrooms.

Mademoiselle Lemas was completely trustworthy and was more than willing to feed unexpected guests.

She had been sheltering British agents, downed airmen, and escaping prisoners of war for years.

And she might know what had happened to Brian Standish.

It was a mile or two from the center of town.

The four women set out to walk there, still in pairs a hundred meters apart.

They arrived half an hour later.

The rue du Bois was a quiet suburban street: a surveillance team would have trouble concealing themselves here.

There was only one parked car within sight, an impeccably upright Peugeot 201 that was much too slow for the Gestapo.

It was empty.

Flick and Ruby took a preliminary walk past Mademoiselle Lemas's house.

It looked the same as always.

Her Simca Cinq stood in the courtyard, which was unusual only in that she normally parked it in the garage.

Flick slowed her pace and surreptitiously looked in at the window.

She saw no one.

Mademoiselle Lemas used that room only rarely: it was an old-fashioned front parlor, the piano immaculately dusted, the cushions always plumped, the door kept firmly closed except for formal visits.

Her secret guests always sat in the kitchen at the back of the house, where there was no chance they would be seen by passersby.

As Flick passed the door, her eye was caught by something on the ground.

It was a wooden toothbrush.

Without pausing in her stride, she stooped and picked it up.

Ruby said, "Do you need to clean your teeth?" "This looks like Paul's." She almost thought it was Paul's, although there must be hundreds like it in France, maybe thousands.

"Do you think he might be here?" "Maybe." "Why would he have come?" "I don't know.

To warn us of danger, perhaps." They walked on around the block.

Before approaching the house again, she let Greta and Jelly catch up.

"This time we'll go together," she said.

"Greta and Jelly, knock on the front door." Jelly said, "Thank gordon, my feet are killing me." "Ruby and I will go around to the back, just as a precaution.

Don't say anything about us, just wait for us to appear." They walked along the street again, all together this time.

Flick and Ruby went into the courtyard and past the Simca Cinq and crept around to the back.

The kitchen ran almost the whole width of the house at the rear, with two windows and a door between.

Flick waited until she heard the metallic ring of the doorbell; then she risked a peep through a window.

Her heart stopped.

There were three people in the kitchen: two men in uniform, and a tall woman with luxuriant red hair who was definitely not the middle-aged Mademoiselle Lemas.

In a frozen fraction of a second, Flick noted that all three were looking away from the windows, reflexively turning in the direction of the front door.

Then she ducked down again.

She thought fast.

The men were obviously Gestapo officers.

The woman must be a French traitor, posing as Mademoiselle Lemas.

She had looked vaguely familiar, even from the back: there was something about the stylish drape of her green summer dress that struck a chord in Flick's memory.

It was dismayingly clear to Flick that the safe house had been betrayed.

The place was now a trap for Allied agents.

Poor Brian Standish must have fallen straight into it.

Flick wondered whether he was still alive.

A feeling of cold determination came over her.

She drew her pistol.

Ruby did the same.

"Three people," she told Ruby in a low voice.

"Two men and a woman." She took a deep breath.

It was time to be ruthless.

"We're going to kill the men," she said.

"Okay?" Ruby nodded.

Flick thanked heaven for Ruby's cool head.

"I'd prefer to keep the woman alive for questioning, but we'll shoot her if she seems likely to escape." "Got it." "The men are at the left-hand end of the kitchen.

The woman will probably go to the door.

You take this window, I'll take the far one.

Aim at the man nearest to you.

Shoot when I shoot." She crept across the width of the house and crouched under the other window.

Her breath was coming fast and her heart was beating like a steam hammer, but she was thinking as clearly as if she were playing chess.

She had no experience of firing through glass.

She decided to shoot three times in rapid succession: once to shatter the window, a second time to kill her man, and a third time to be sure of him.

She thumbed the safety catch on her pistol and held it pointing to the sky.

Then she straightened up and looked in through the window.

The two men were standing facing the door to the hail.

Both had pistols drawn.

Flick leveled her gun at the one nearest her.

The woman had gone, but as Flick looked she returned, holding the kitchen door open.

Greta and Jelly walked in ahead of her, all unsuspecting; then they saw the Gestapo men.

Greta gave a small scream of fear.

Something was said-Flick could not hear what-then Greta and Jelly raised their hands in the air.

The fake Mademoiselle Lemas walked into the kitchen behind them.

Seeing her full-face, Flick felt a shock of recognition.

She had seen her before.

An instant later she remembered where.

The woman had been in the square at Sainte-Cecile last Sunday with Dieter Franck.

Flick had thought she was the officer's mistress.

Obviously she was something more than that.

A moment later the woman saw Flick's face at the window.

Her mouth dropped open, her eyes widened, and she lifted her hand to point at what she had seen.

The two men began to turn.

Flick pulled the trigger.

The bang of the gun seemed simultaneous with the crash of breaking glass.

Holding the gun level and steady, she fired twice more.

A second later, Ruby fired.

Both men fell to the ground.

Flick threw open the back door and stepped inside.

The young woman had already turned away.

She was making a dash for the front door.

Flick raised her gun, but too late: in a split second the woman was in the hail and out of Flick's line of sight.

Then Jelly, moving surprisingly fast, threw herself through the door.

There was a crash of falling bodies and breaking furniture.

Flick crossed the kitchen and looked.

Jelly had brought the woman down on the tiled floor of the hall.

She had also broken the delicate curved legs of a kidney-shaped table, smashed a Chinese vase that had stood on the table, and scattered a spray of dried grasses that had been in the vase.

The French woman struggled to get up.

Flick aimed her pistol but did not fire.

Jelly, showing remarkably quick reactions, grabbed the woman by the hair and banged her head on the tiles until she stopped wriggling.

The woman was wearing odd shoes, one black and one brown.

Flick turned back and looked at the two Gestapo men on the kitchen floor.

Both lay still.

She picked up their guns and pocketed them.

Loose firearms left lying around might be used by the enemy.

For the moment, the four Jackdaws were safe.

Flick was operating on adrenaline.

The time would come, she knew, when she would think about the man she had killed.

The end of a life was a dreadful moment.

Its solemnity might be postponed but would return.

Hours or days from now, Flick would wonder if the young man in uniform had left behind a wife who was now alone, and children fatherless.

But for the present, she was able to put that aside and think only of her mission.

She said, "Jelly, keep the woman covered.

Greta, find some string and tie her to a chair.

Ruby, go upstairs and make sure there's no one else in the house.

I'll check the basement." She ran down the stairs to the cellar.

There on the dirt floor she saw the figure of a man, tied up and gagged.

The gag covered much of his face, but she could see that half his ear had been shot oft She pulled the gag from his mouth, bent down, and gave him a long, passionate kiss.

"Welcome to France." He grinned.

"Best welcome I ever had." "I've got your toothbrush." "It was a last-second thing, because I wasn't perfectly sure of the redhead." "It made me just that little bit more suspicious." "Thank God." She took the sharp little knife from its sheath under her lapel and began to cut the cords that bound him.

"How did you get here?" "Parachuted in last night." "What the hell for?" "Brian's radio is definitely being operated by the Gestapo.

I wanted to warn you." She threw her arms around him in a burst of affection.

"I'm so glad you're here!" He hugged and kissed her.

"In that case I'm glad I came." They went upstairs.

"Look who I found in the cellar," Flick said.

They were all waiting for instructions.

She thought for a moment.

Five minutes had passed since the shooting.

The neighbors must have heard gunfire, but few French citizens were quick to call the police nowadays: they were afraid they would end up answering questions at the Gestapo office.

However, she would not take needless risks.

They had to be out of here as soon as possible.

She turned her attention to the fake Mademoiselle Lemas, now tied to a kitchen chair.

She knew what had to be done, and her heart sank at the prospect.

"What is your name?" she asked her.

"Stephanie Vinson." "You're the mistress of Dieter Franck." She was as pale as a sheet but looked defiant, and Flick thought how beautiful she was.

"He saved my life." So that was how Franck had won her loyalty, Flick thought.

It made no difference: a traitor was a traitor, whatever the motive.

"You brought Helicopter to this house to be captured." She said nothing.

"Is Helicopter alive or dead?" "I don't know." Flick pointed to Paul.

"You brought him here, too.

You would have helped the Gestapo capture us all." The anger sounded in her voice as she thought of the danger to Paul.

Stephanie lowered her gaze.

Flick walked behind the chair and drew her gun.

"You're French, yet you collaborated with the Gestapo.

You might have killed us all." The others, seeing what was coming, stood aside, out of the line of fire.

Stephane could not see the gun, but she sensed what was happening.

She whispered, "What are you going to do with me?" Flick said, "If we leave you here now, you will tell Dieter Franck how many we are, and describe us to him, and help him to capture us so that we can be tortured and killed... won't you?" She did not answer.

Flick pointed the gun at the back of Stephanie's head.

"Do you have any excuse for helping the enemy?" "I did what I had to.

Doesn't everyone?" "Exactly," Flick said, and she pulled the trigger twice.

The gun boomed in the confined space.

Blood and something else spurted from the woman's face and splashed on the skirt of her elegant green dress, and she slumped forward soundlessly.

Jelly flinched and Greta turned away.

Even Paul went white.

Only Ruby remained expressionless.

They were all silent for a moment.

Then Flick said, "Let's get out of here."