by Wilbur Smith
“A roadblock,” whispered Burgers.
“Leave it to me,” Saffron replied.
They were close to the bridge. One side of the road had been blocked off and the soldiers were putting a barrier across the other. It would be a minute or two before the barrier was fully operational.
Saffron saw a woman with dark hair, whose coat looked like the one she had been wearing. One of the plainclothes men had stopped her. He was demanding to see her papers. The woman was scrabbling in her handbag, scared out of her wits.
The other cop looked in their direction. Saffron smiled at him flirtatiously and then called out, “Hello, boys!” at the nearest soldiers. The men stopped what they were doing and rewarded her attention with broad grins and a couple of whistles, until the sergeant in charge shouted at them to get back to work.
By then, Saffron and Burgers were on the bridge.
“I should have gone blonde years ago,” she joked. “I had no idea what I was missing.”
His eyes were fixed on the road ahead. The bridge was sited at the point where the smaller River Ourthe flowed into the Meuse. There was a narrow sliver of land between the two rivers and a fourth arch took the bridge over the Ourthe. Only when they had stepped off the bridge onto the far bank did Burgers allow himself to relax.
There were more roadblocks as they made their way out of the city, heading southeast. On one occasion they had to shin up a drainpipe at the back of a shop that had closed for the day and clamber over the rooftops of the buildings next to it to get around the Germans below. On another they had to sneak through the gardens of some large Victorian villas on the edge of town.
“I think the way will be clear from now on,” Burgers said. “Even the Germans can’t close every road in Belgium.” He grimaced. “Now I have to steal a car. I don’t like that. I don’t want to deprive a decent citizen of his prize possession.”
Saffron did not argue. She owed this man her life. It was hardly fair to criticize him for being too scrupulous. They walked for about a kilometer across country and came into a village with a square, around which stood a church, a café, several shops, houses and a mairie, or town hall.
A light was on in the mairie. A large Renault was parked outside it.
“The mayor must be working late tonight,” he said. “There is his car. It must be his because, look, there is a sign saying the space is reserved. If he is the mayor then he is, by definition, a collaborator, because you cannot hold a public office unless you have been approved by les Boches. Therefore I do not feel bad taking his car. I am striking a blow for freedom.”
Saffron patted him on the back. “Well said! Would you like me to break into the car for you?”
“You can do that?”
“I can.”
“I am impressed. But there will be no need. It will not be locked. Who would be crazy enough to take the mayor’s car? And, before you ask, I am capable of starting the engine.”
Sure enough, the doors opened without being forced. Burgers reached beneath the dashboard, pulled out two wires, touched them together to complete the ignition circuit.
“Superb!” He beamed. “Let’s go!”
•••
It was still light when they reached the farm where André’s parents, Luc and Julie Deforge, lived. They took Saffron in without hesitation. Burgers soon left. He planned to drive most of the way back to Liège, leave the car a few kilometers from the village where it had originally come from and then catch a bus into the city.
“I will return with André tomorrow and we will contact London. Until then, au revoir!”
Julie climbed a ladder into the farmhouse attic, carrying an oil storm-lantern, and Saffron passed up blankets, sheets and pillows before following her up. She entered a dark, musty space that seemed like a repository for all the junk that any family accumulates. Saffron saw an old rocking horse, two small, child-sized wooden chairs and a pair of boy’s bicycles in one corner. Elsewhere she noticed a stack of empty picture frames, a coat stand, the rusting components of an old iron bedstead and tea chests piled almost as high as the ceiling against the far wall.
Julie had placed the lantern on top of a small wooden table. Saffron assumed that they would assemble the bed that she had spotted. But instead Julie walked across the attic to one side of the pile of tea chests, placed her hands against them and pushed.
To Saffron’s amazement the pile rolled smoothly across the floor in a single mass. She saw that they had been arranged in a rough, apparently random triangular shape, like a stepped pyramid. One side of it exactly matched the angle of the roof, so the boxes could slide all the way to the side wall. In the space where they had been standing was a door.
“That’s marvelous!” she exclaimed.
Julie smiled. “André’s big brother, Henri, did that. He could always make anything, that boy. He found the chests, then screwed them together and put in little wheels, like the ones on the bottom of furniture, inside the boxes, where they could not be seen. He and André had their secret place where they could hide from everyone.”
Julie’s face hardened, and she spat on the floor. “The filthy Boches took him to work in their factories. They have turned our men into slaves. They’ll be after André too, once he finishes his studies. Aahhh . . . what can any of us do, eh? Come.”
She led Saffron into a small room, which was lit by a skylight. “It cannot be seen from the ground. The chimney is in the way. Now, look here . . .”
The edge of the box-pile protruded across the doorway. Saffron saw a wooden handle, facing the room. Julie took hold of it, pulled and the boxes rolled back across the open space. Then she closed the door. “Alors . . . now we are hidden.”
There were four mattresses on the floor, an empty chamberpot and a discarded newspaper. Saffron picked it up and saw that is was dated March 14, 1942. There was a picture of Hitler on the front page, over which someone had drawn warts, devil’s horns and blacked-out teeth.
“You are not the first guest at our little hotel,” Julie said. “Four of your pilots were here last year. We sheltered them until the Resistance came to take them away. I think there is a secret route to Spain. Maybe you could go the same way.”
“Yes . . .”
“Come with me, chérie.” Julie went through the same routine with the door and the boxes in reverse. A few seconds later, they were back in the attic and there was no sign whatsoever of the secret room.
“Let us go outside,” Julie said, leading the way down the ladder. “No one will see us . . . and we will pick some flowers, to make your room less miserable. I have made a casserole of pork and apples for Luc and me to eat for our supper. We can get some broad beans and potatoes from the kitchen garden and there will be more than enough for three.”
“Please don’t go short on my account. I know how hard it is for farmers with the Germans demanding everything you produce for themselves.”
“Pah!” Julie snorted disdainfully as they walked back down the stairs to the ground floor of the farmhouse. “They are like locusts. If we only had what they allowed us, we would starve. But we are not as foolish as they imagine. Did you know that pigs and chickens are both woodland creatures? Alors . . . when we know les Boches are coming, we return one or two of the pigs and maybe six of the chickens to nature. They have a little vacation among the trees. Then they come back to the pigsties and the chicken runs and all their friends are gone. But we have meat and eggs, and even the Germans would not deny us our potager to give us vegetables and fruit.”
Saffron helped Julie gather a basket of supplies for her supper and a bunch of sweet peas for her room. They ate splendidly and washed the food down with cider made from the farm’s own apples.
It became clear that Burgers had not told the Deforges why Saffron needed their help; they had known him since he was a boy and their trust in him was absolute. Still, she felt she owed it to them to know the truth, and made it clear that she would bear them no ill will if her presence w
as too great a risk to their own safety. But when they heard what had happened to her, the Deforges were united in their support.
Luc took his pipe from his mouth and pointed the stem at Saffron, emphasizing his words with little jabs as he assured her, “If a man tries to rape a woman, he deserves to die. And if a man joins those sons-of-whores, the SS, then he deserves to die, too. If he is in the SS and a rapist . . .” Luc sat back, feeling no need to complete the sentence. He turned to his wife. “Bring us some cognac, my love—the good bottle. I wish to drink a toast to this brave young woman.”
•••
That night, Saffron sat on the mattress on the floor of the secret room with her head in her hands. In front of her was the old newspaper, Hitler staring up at her, the defacement of his features doing little to alleviate the murderous intent in his eyes. The date of the newspaper was two years and eleven months since that Good Friday in 1939 in Paris when she and Gerhard held each other close, a moment of transcendence when time itself stood still. She missed his touch so deeply that the emptiness inside her ached. The photo of the two of them by the Eiffel Tower was in her hand, a little faded now. She wondered if he retained those strong forearms, his delicate hands, his clear, bright purpose, whether his soul had been disfigured, scarred or even destroyed, or had he cheated death? She could never give up hope.
•••
The following evening, Burgers returned, riding pillion on André’s motorbike.
“The Boches are going crazy,” he told Saffron when they met up in the farmhouse kitchen. “You know that poor woman we saw with the Gestapo at the bridge yesterday evening? Every female who is more than a meter-sixty tall and has even slightly dark brown hair is being stopped. They are offering rewards for anyone who has information, and threatening death to anyone who helps you. I have been made aware of a particularly dangerous informer who goes by the name of Prosper Dezitter . . .” Burgers hesitated, concerned by a sudden grimace on Saffron’s face. “What’s the matter?”
“When I came to the café yesterday afternoon, there were two men there . . . and a waitress I’d not seen before. They could identify me. And that would be bad for Claude.”
“These two men, were they wearing overalls, like laborers?”
“Yes.”
“And did the waitress have the air of a woman who did not give a damn about her job, but only wanted to read her magazine?”
Saffron laughed. “How did you know?”
“Because the men are Pierre and Marco. They are in the café every afternoon and they are passionate communists. They would never betray anyone to the Nazis. And the waitress was Madeleine, Claude’s daughter. It is true, she and her papa have fights that you would not believe, but they love each other very much. You are safe with her. I will brief you later on Prosper Dezitter, dark complexion, black hair, around five foot six inches tall. His nickname is: l’homme au doigt coupe. His mistress is called Florie Dings—she too is not to be trusted.”
•••
“André, let’s go and inspect your radio gear. It’s been stuck in that barn for three years. I hope it’s not been eaten by rats.”
As they walked over to the barn, Burgers said, “Have you thought about how you can escape? We could arrange for you to get false papers and travel permits, but I must be honest: the quality is not perfect, and the way the Germans are looking for you . . . I cannot believe you could get to Spain, or even Switzerland without being caught.”
“I agree,” Saffron said. “I’ve been thinking about it. I have to get back to London. I’ve got too much information for a few radio messages. I must tell them in person. But if I try to get out overland, it could be months before I’m back in England. And I’ll put too many lives in danger along the way. I have to get out by air.”
“Can they do that?”
“There’s a special squadron that flies in and out of France all the time. They don’t come over here, to the Low Countries. But where we are seems rural; maybe they could fly here. But would there be anywhere safe to land?”
Burgers called out, “Hey, André, whatever happened to the field at La Sauvinière? You know the one that people used to fly from? Are the Luftwaffe using it?”
“Not as far as I know,” André replied. His voice was slightly muffled because his upper body and head were leaning under the bonnet of the old van in which the Deforges had taken their produce to market, before the Germans had removed that possibility by taking everything for themselves. “No one round here is allowed to fly, of course. It’s probably a cow pasture now.”
André lifted various bits of kit out of the engine bay and placed them on the ground. He stood up straight, wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and said, “But it’s on the road from Spa to Francorchamps. Hardly an ideal place for a secret rendezvous.”
“Yes, but it’s a huge space,” Burgers countered. “And I’m sure parts of it are hidden from the road by trees.”
André considered then nodded. “I think so too.”
“There you go,” Burgers said to Saffron. “Now you have an airfield.”
An hour later, André had reassembled his old radio and tuned it to the frequency used to call London. Meanwhile Saffron and Burgers had studied a local map supplied by Monsieur Deforge. She composed and coded her message and was ready to send it. Following the codes that identified Saffron and the pad she was using, it read:
HOLLAND WORSE MARKS FEARED. TOTAL BLOWOUT. HAVE VITAL INFO. AM HUNTED BY GERMANS. KILLED SS MAN SCHRODER. COVER BLOWN. REQUEST IMMEDIATE AIR EXTRACTION. SUGGEST FIELD AT LA SAUVINIERE 4KM ESE SPA BELGIUM OFF N62 ROAD TO FRANCORCHAMPS. PLS REPLY TONIGHT, 22:00 GMT
“Less than two minutes,” André said when he had finished transmitting. “I’m getting better.”
•••
The transmission was picked up by an operator for the Funk-Horchdienst, the German radio interception service, but they were unable to get more than a general fix on the source: eastern Belgium, not far from the border with the Reich itself. It was not an area from which they had previously detected any radio traffic to or from London. When the cryptographers were handed the text, they noted that the pattern of letters was unlike standard British coding. One member of the team recalled seeing something similar a fortnight earlier. But there was no time to break the code. The Führer had recently ordered that all radio and cryptographic staff had to be dedicated to Russian radio traffic. Army Group Central was about to be thrown at the Soviet front line in the biggest offensive action since Barbarossa, and that was all that mattered.
•••
“What do you make of this?” Gubbins asked, holding a copy of Saffron’s message. “Is it genuine?”
“The coding is spot-on,” Leo Marks replied. “And there’s one other thing: our girls recognized the style of the chap who communicates with us from Groupe G. That ties in with what Courtney said in her first message.”
“Next question: Amies, do we have any information to corroborate this talk of the Germans hunting Courtney?”
“Yes, sir, I checked with Signals and there’s been a lot of chatter about a British spy killing an SS officer: radio traffic between German units in Holland and Belgium, and radio broadcasts ordering the public to cooperate. There hasn’t been anything about her being arrested. The Jerries would have wanted the world to know if they’d caught their quarry.”
“That makes sense. N, what about this Schröder chap?”
The head of the Netherlands section had only just found out that an operation had been run on his patch without his prior knowledge. He had been extremely put out by the news. But there was no point making a fuss. Self-pity was not an emotion for which Gubbins had any time.
“He is, or was, an exceptionally nasty piece of work, even by SS standards,” N said. “He’s led the death squads on at least two occasions when hostages have been murdered in reprisal for acts by the Dutch Resistance. I would class him as a significant loss to the SS in Holland.”
“Can I take it that we are agreed that this message was indeed sent by Ensign Courtney, that she did kill Schröder and that she is now in grave danger?”
Seeing no sign of dissent, Gubbins continued, “Now, to the question of the intelligence she has gathered. What do you make of it, Amies? I must say that the idea that Courtney has had private chats with the Military Governor of Belgium does strike one as somewhat farfetched.”
“True, but she named Colonel Scholtz as her source for the news that our agents had been seized. I’ll be honest, his name was new to me. So far as I knew, the local Abwehr was run by a chap called Colonel Servaes. But I have confirmed that she was right. Scholtz is the new man in charge. More importantly, sir, I do not believe that Saffron Courtney is the kind of fantasist who invents information to make themselves appear more valuable or important. The person who does that fears that they are insignificant. I doubt that girl has ever felt insignificant in her life.”
“I tend to agree with you,” Gubbins said. “What’s more, if she has found out what we wanted to know about our network in the Low Countries, even if it’s bad news—in fact, especially if it’s bad news—we need to know everything she has to tell us.
“Amies, you sent her and she’s on your patch—I’m putting you in charge of getting her out. Send her a message. Keep it as short as you can. Tell her we’re on our way, tomorrow night. She will receive instructions at twenty-one hundred GMT.”
“Tomorrow? The R.A.F. may have a word or two to say about that. Short notice for them.”
“Then they’d better start work on it right away. Call Tempsford. Impress upon them the importance of the agent and the need for urgency. If they want any recce photographs, they’ll need a plane in the air first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.” Amies looked at Gubbins. “May I speak frankly, sir?”