‘Thank you, Roess. That is very good of you. Be sure that I will remember your cooperation. The girl will be delivered to me, personally.’ Again Roess raised his eyebrows. ‘Dismissed.’ Roess left the room and Hoepner picked up his phone. ‘Get me Major von Helsingen. In Chartres.’ He waited, drumming his fingers on his desk until he heard the familiar voice. ‘Good morning, Frederick. You owe me one.’
‘Oh, well done. As you say, I owe you. Any problems?’
‘I do not think so. Now perhaps you will tell me what it is all about.’
‘This girl has a sister. The most entrancing creature.’
‘I am told this young woman is very pretty, when she is not hitting policemen. So the sister inveigled you into a deal: her bed for her sister.’
‘It is not the least like that. I offered to help her.’
‘Just like that?’
‘You haven’t met her.’
‘I look forward to doing so, certainly. But if you are going to fuck her, I recommend you do it right away. The baby sister may be in a trifle upset state.’
‘She has not been interrogated?’ Which was the standard euphemism for torture.
‘Not in the Gestapo’s books. But they searched her, as I’m afraid they were entitled to do.’
‘And?’
‘She was deflowered, by their fingers.’
‘Good God! The bastards! But... deflowered? She is a married woman.’
‘There is a mystery you may care to investigate. But as I say, have the first sister before the second is delivered to you, and you can tell her sibling what happened.’
‘You do not understand, Franz. I am not going to have Madeleine at all, unless expressly invited to do so. I think I am in love.’ Hoepner stared at the phone in consternation.
*
Madeleine stood on the steps of the Chartres house to watch the command car coming down the drive. As there were only half a dozen servants left, and a single elderly gardener, the grounds were starting to look somewhat wild, but she supposed it would get worse before it got better. Unless she stayed, and Frederick was as good as his word and found some help for her.
As good as his word! He was an enemy of her country and thus of herself. If some people were to be believed, he was an enemy of mankind. Frederick? He was certainly a Nazi. That was to say, he believed in Hitler. She could not accept he believed all of the Nazis’ more grotesque theories, but he saw in his Fiihrer the man to lead Germany back to greatness, the man who had already done so. It was difficult to argue with that.
At dinner the previous night, in Chartres’ best restaurant, she had been a bundle of nerves. That had been partly because she had dined there so often before, and if there had been no more than a dozen other French diners, she was known to them as well as all the waiters. But it had mainly been because she had no idea what was going to follow the meal. Nothing had.
Frederick’s manners had been impeccable, both during and after dinner; when he had driven her home he had done no more than kiss her on the cheek.
Now she was being offered a further example of his integrity: seated next to him in the back of the open car was Amalie. She ran down the steps. ‘Amalie!’
The orderly sitting in front beside the driver got out and opened the rear door, and Amalie stepped down. She did not look at the man, or at Helsingen, who was seated beside her. To Madeleine’s dismay, she did not pause to embrace her sister, but brushed past her and ran up the steps into the house. The orderly now came towards Madeleine, carrying a valise. Helsingen followed.
‘What has happened?’ Madeleine asked.
‘Shall we go inside? I will take this.’ Helsingen took the valise from the orderly’s hand.
Madeleine led him up the steps. Antoine waited at the top. ‘Where is Madame Burstein?’
‘She went straight upstairs, mademoiselle.’
Madeleine looked at Helsingen.
‘I think you should make sure she is all right. I will wait.’ Madeleine hurried up the stairs. The night before the wedding, Amalie had slept in Pyramids, so she tried that first. The door was locked. Oh, my God, she thought. She banged on the panels. ‘Amalie! Let me in.’
‘I am drawing a bath.’
Madeleine could hear the sound of running water. ‘Then you will come down?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps.’
‘Amalie! Promise me you are not going to do anything silly. Listen, we are going down to Paulliac. Home to Mama and Papa. You will be safe there until Henri comes home. Please promise me you’ll do nothing stupid.’
‘I am not going to commit suicide, goose,’ Amalie said. ‘I am going to stay alive. So that I can kill Germans.’
‘Ah... right. Come down when you are ready.’ Slowly Madeleine went downstairs.
Helsingen stood in the drawing room doorway. Needless to say, Laurent had provided him with a glass of champagne. Now he hurried forward with a glass for Madeleine. ‘Is she all right?’ Helsingen asked.
‘I think she will be. At the moment she’s a little upset.’
‘I am not surprised.’
Madeleine led him into the room. ‘What happened to her?’
‘She spent three days in a Gestapo cell. I... Well, perhaps you should wait for her to tell you herself.’
Madeleine sat down. ‘I would like you to tell me, Frederick.’ He sat beside her. ‘They seemed... interested in the fact that although she was married, she was still intact.’
‘She got married on the morning your invasion started, and Henri had to rejoin his regiment immediately after the ceremony. But you mean... Oh, my God!’
‘Technically she was not raped. But she had a pretty horrifying experience, certainly for one so young and inexperienced.’ He held her hand. ‘I am most terribly sorry, believe me. Can you ever forgive me?’
‘You are not guilty.’ Her voice was low.
‘They were Germans. The ugly side of our society.’
‘Will they be punished?’
‘They committed no crime. By hitting one of them Amalie placed herself in their power.’
‘From which you extricated her. I, my whole family, even Amalie in time, will be eternally grateful to you.’
‘It is only your gratitude I seek.’
They gazed at each other. ‘What do you wish me to do?’ Madeleine asked.
Helsingen smiled. ‘That is a dangerous question to ask a man who finds you as attractive as I do. However, in the first instance, what you must do is leave Chartres and take your sister down to Paulliac. And stay there until the war ends. It will not be long now. The Führer has invited the British to make peace. This they will almost certainly do, for all of Churchill’s bravado; there is nothing left for them to fight and risk destruction for. If they do not, well, I can tell you that we have plans for that destruction, before the end of the year.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes. But Paulliac...’
‘Is a long way from Chartres? You mean, if I wished it, you would stay here? Out of gratitude?’
‘That would be part of it.’
‘I would prefer to know about the other part.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘But not now. This is something we both need to think about, and you have a duty to take your sister to her home, where she can recover from her ordeal.’
‘Oh. Well... if Henri were able to join us there, now that the war is over...’
‘Henri?’
‘Her husband.’
‘The Jew. You told me he was reported missing in action.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he is probably dead.’
‘But if he were to be alive, and can join Amalie...‘
‘If he is alive, Madeleine, if he has any sense, he will never attempt to regain his wife, because the moment he does so he will be arrested and sent to a concentration camp.’
‘Because he is a Jew. How can you permit such things?’
‘I do not make the laws. I only fight the battles necessary to preserve them. Now you are angry with me.’
>
‘Not with you, Frederick. Only with the people who - ’
He laid his finger on her lips. ‘Don’t ever say it.’
She stood up. ‘I do not wish to hurt you. I have said I am eternally grateful to you for what you have done. Now...’
He stood also. ‘You must prepare to leave.’ From his breast pocket he took an envelope, ‘In here are travel permits for your sister and yourself, and train tickets to Bordeaux. I’m afraid there does not appear to be a train service from Bordeaux to Paulliac, but it does not look very far on the map. You have money?’
‘Yes, I have money. But... train? I prefer to drive.’
‘That would not be safe, for two unescorted young women.’
‘Oh. Well, again, thank you. And goodbye. I don’t suppose we shall meet again.’
‘That is up to you. I have some leave coming up in a month’s time. I was going to ask your permission to come down to Paulliac myself and call upon you. Would you permit me to do that?’
Madeleine stared at him in consternation. This man is a Nazi and stands for everything that is evil about that philosophy. But he is so charming, and so perfectly mannered, and he has saved Amalie from possible execution... And if the Wehrmacht is going to occupy at least western France for the foreseeable future... ‘I would like that very much,’ she said.
*
‘The brigadier will see you now, Captain,’ said the uniformed secretary. James stood up — he had been waiting half an hour — and followed her from the ante-chamber into an outer office, where there was another secretary banging away at a typewriter, and up to a pair of double doors. These she opened. ‘Captain Barron, sir.’
She stood to one side. James stepped past her, came to attention before the desk, saluted, then removed his cap and tucked it under his arm. ‘Take a pew, Barron.’ James lowered himself on to the straight chair before the desk. Behind him he heard the doors close. The brigadier was a heavy-set man who wore a little moustache, incongruous against the background of his receding hairline. He studied the file before him. ‘It says here that you are fit for duty.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It seems to have been a nasty dent. No repercussions? Headaches? Double vision?’
‘There was some in the beginning, sir. Not now.’
The brigadier regarded him for a few seconds, then said, ‘Two.’
It took James a moment to catch on. ‘Four.’
‘Eight.’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘Sixty-four.’
‘A hundred and twenty-eight.’
‘Two hundred and fifty-six.’
‘Five hundred and twelve.’
‘One thousand and twenty-four.’
‘Two thousand and forty-eight.’
‘Four thousand and ninety-six.’
‘Eight thousand, one hundred and ninety-two.’
‘Sixteen thousand, three hundred and eighty-four.’
‘Thirty-two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-eight.’
‘Sixty-five thousand, five hundred and thirty-six.’
‘One hundred and thirty-one thousand and seventy-two.’
‘Two hundred and sixty-two thousand, one hundred and forty-four.’
‘Five hundred and twenty-four thousand, two hundred and eighty-eight.’
‘One million and forty-eight thousand, five hundred and seventy-six.’
‘That’s very good.’
‘Actually, sir, it’s a game I used to play with my sisters when we were kids. We could reach a billion.’
‘Hm. You could have told me that when I began.’
‘I assumed you were trying to prove something, sir.’
The brigadier gazed at him for several seconds, then grinned. ‘And I have done so. Very good. You are passed here as physically fit, and you appear to be mentally fit as well. How about decisions?’
‘I can make them, sir.’
‘Unpleasant ones?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Ambition?’
‘Right now, to be returned to my regiment.’
‘You were in MI.’
‘Yes, sir. But I do not believe there are any enemy POWs to be interrogated at the moment.’
‘You won’t find any of them handy to exchange fire with, either. We are not actually in contact with any enemy force at this moment, on land, save for a few shots to and fro across the Egyptian border. But the enemy are still there to be beaten. I would like you to remain in MI. Only this will be a special branch of Intelligence.’ He indicated the file. ‘You made a report, dated 10 May, in which you denigrated French morale.’
‘Well, yes, sir. But - ’
‘That report turned out to be unpleasantly correct. Know the French well, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, sir.’
‘Please, Captain. I haven’t the time to deal with false modesty. When you left Dunkirk, you brought out with you a French officer, Lieutenant de Gruchy. He says he was a friend of yours.’
‘Well, yes, sir. He is.’
‘His family are now in occupied France.’
‘His family are the wine people, sir. They live in Paulliac. Only a few miles from Bordeaux.’
‘Bordeaux is now occupied by the Germans. The whole Atlantic coast of France is under German occupation. Naturally, not all Frenchmen are happy with the situation. As you may know, there are quite a few of them in England, including your friend, who are anxious to do all they can to reverse it. That is going to take a long time. We could be talking years. But we have to start now. What we need is information. The fact is that the rapidity of the German victory has rather caught us with our pants down. All our agents in those countries now occupied have gone by the board, or have had to be pulled out in a hurry. Now, setting up agents is normally a matter of years. We don’t have years to play with. We have got to know what is actually happening in France: German strengths and movements, civilian morale, the possibility of local physical resistance, etc. At the behest of the PM, we are setting up a unit to handle this. It will be called Special Operations. It seems to me that you would be ideal for a job in this new set-up. Would you like to volunteer? Believe me, you would be doing far more to bring down Jerry than aimlessly drilling an infantry company in the hopes of an early return across the Channel. Incidentally, acceptance of this posting carries promotion to major.’
‘Well, sir...’
‘Your first assignment would be to monitor your friend de Gruchy.’
‘Pierre? I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
‘He, amongst others, has volunteered to return to France as a British agent.’
‘Isn’t that hellishly risky?’
‘There is no reason why it should be. He went missing following the Dunkirk debacle. If he turns up in Paulliac with a suitable cover story of survival and privation, no one is going to ask any serious questions. And he is also an ideal man. The Germans appreciate their wine as much as anyone else. That means they will keep de Gruchy and Son in business. There is a Paris office, of course. Pierre will get his father to appoint him manager of that office, from where he will be rubbing shoulders with German brass every day. I think he is going to be invaluable.’
‘Yes, but if he’s found out...’
‘If he’s careful that should not happen. In any event, the risk is far less than that of stopping a bullet as a front-line soldier.’
‘I was thinking of his family. His sisters.’
‘He is confident that they will be supportive.’
‘I was thinking of if they were arrested by the Gestapo. They are three most beautiful girls.’
‘If everyone behaves according to the book, that should not happen. You said you were capable of making decisions, even unpleasant ones. I should also point out that as de Gruchy is determined to return as our agent, someone is going to have to monitor him, and his family, from our end. If you are as fond of them as you appear to be, wouldn’t you rather be the monitor y
ourself rather than some complete stranger, who might regard them merely as names and pins on a map and not care whether they lived or died? Certainly if a situation arose where one, or even all, of them had to be brought out.’
‘Is that possible, sir? Bringing them out?’
‘It is possible, certainly. But the situation would have to be acute, and they would have to wish to come. In any event, such a decision would have to be taken by a higher authority. That is me. Do I understand that you will accept the posting?’ Time for that decision-making ability. He had never envisaged the war as more than a gigantic jolly. Not until Dunkirk, that is. And the horrors of Dunkirk had made him acutely aware that he should have been with his company rather than swanning around as a staff officer. All the time he had been convalescing his mind had been centred on returning to the regiment. Now...
But what other decision could he make? To hold the wellbeing, the very lives, of Amalie and Madeleine, and above all, Liane, in his hands was a frightening thought, but to think of the lives of those laughing, confident, happy women in the hands of someone else was quite unacceptable. ‘Yes, sir. I accept.’
‘You understand that as of this moment, your every action, your every thought, must be top secret, to be shared only with me. You will tell your operatives only what is absolutely necessary for them to know. Never, under any circumstances, unless authorized by me, will you divulge the existence or identity of one operative to another. You are, of course, beginning with a subject you know you can handle. I assume you trust this de Gruchy fellow?’
‘Absolutely, sir.’
‘Very good. However, in the course of time you will be handling other operatives, and we must accept that amongst them there may be a traitor, or potential traitor. Hence the necessity to limit their knowledge of what we are doing or seeking or who we are using to a minimum.’
‘What happens if I do detect a traitor, sir?’
‘I’m afraid such matters will have to be handled internally; calling in the police, with all the legal and political ramifications that could ensue, and even more, the resulting publicity, is not an option. Thus you may have to take what is termed executive action. Are you happy about that? I may say that no such action is ever to be undertaken without reference to me first.’
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