The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  And so as he walked among these people he chatted about trivial things – the state of the road they were on, whether a new film was any good – giving him respite from the thoughts of what he was immersed in. They were good folk and knew nothing of what he had been through.

  He wanted to stay among them, to go to their homes. One was highly knowledgeable about Fauvist art and he and Reece discussed Chagall, neither mentioning the artist’s enforced flight to America. Another invited him to eat at his house that night – so long as Reece could bring coupons to cover his meal, of course – but Reece could neither spare the time nor risk the danger to the man’s family that would come from harbouring him for the evening.

  They were the France he had known, these men and women: romantic about painters, cheerful in food and wine. He watched them walking, satisfied with what they had begged from their rural relations, joshing each other. And all the time they talked Reece became more determined to recover what he could of that for the nation.

  Once they were inside the city he bade goodbye to his new friends and set off on his own path.

  As he walked his mind turned to the man whose throat he had cut – the only good Gestapo officer was a dead Gestapo officer, of course, so Reece hoped his death had been a slow agony – and to Sturmbannführer Klaussmann. The Gestapo were after him and had his description, but how much else they knew about him or the circuit he couldn’t tell. That meant that all the while he was trying to find Charlotte the Gestapo would be right behind him and his task would therefore be intensely more difficult.

  At least he had gained one piece of vital knowledge: Klaussmann had mentioned the tabac to his junior officer so Reece couldn’t risk going back there. He would have to shelter elsewhere.

  He had ordered Thomas and Hélène to break into their reserve cover identities and safe houses – and, precisely to defend against hostile infiltration, only Reece had known those details, so they should be secure, even if Charlotte were working for the Germans. He could stay with one of them for a day or two.

  What else could she have told them? She could have said that SOE had acquired the file but the only one who had seen it was Luc. And she could tell them about Reece. She could tell them much about him – how he looked, how he slept.

  But she wouldn’t know that Luc had managed to tell Reece there was a spy in London. So that man wouldn’t have known to go to ground. Special Branch or 5 would therefore still have a chance of hunting him down – if Reece could just get hold of the photographs.

  It was a strange triangle: Reece, Charlotte, Parade. Three agents with different masters, all watching each other. All with different reasons.

  Charlotte. Reece wanted to know what could have turned her against her country. There were collabos everywhere, from the Fascist-copy Parti Franciste to the Carlingue, who were motivated by little but the plunder they could steal from those they turned over to the Gestapo. Charlotte had never seemed to him in the least bit covetous – she was almost ascetic at times, her eyes passing over material things as if they were objects without substance – but equally, the sheer conformism of Fascism seemed as alien to her character as snow to the desert.

  And yet, that was if she were indeed working for the Third Reich. But if she were being held in one of its cells, she would likely be thinking of little else but that Reece and the circuit would come for her. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted that to be the case because, if he failed her, or if he were forced to leave her to rot, the worm in his soul would be worse than if she were a traitor.

  The sun had set by the time he padded on swollen feet through the checkpoints, down through the city itself and across the Île de la Cité, the island in the Seine where the great cathedral of Paris stood, offering sanctuary to those who needed it. He stopped, barely able to walk another step, in front of the holy edifice. It was here that he and Charlotte had once had their photograph taken.

  In need of warmth and rest, he staggered through the entrance archway, surrounded by moulded saints, past the candle-lit bronze crucifix of Napoleon III, into the nave of the church. A service was underway and he dropped into the last pew to watch a choir of boys singing below the majestic stained-glass rose window: an open flower with a thousand coloured petals. He had been brought up without religion or belief in anything beyond the physical world – his sense of what was good and what was not had arisen from an innate sensibility rather than a priest’s words. And yet, as the Latin Mass blanketed him the sound was full of comfort. He stayed for another half-hour, hearing the music and the words from the pulpit, until he felt able to walk on.

  Through paved streets and cobbled lanes he trudged, footsore, until he stood outside a dusty closed bakery south of the Champs-Élysées. The faded turquoise door to its right was bereft of a number but there was a panel of frosted glass. He clacked the knocker, more in hope than confidence that it would be answered. And yet, a few moments later, through the glass, he saw someone approach. It opened warily, to reveal Thomas’s eyes, narrowing at the sight before him.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Thomas asked in a low voice, casually drawing Reece into the flat.

  ‘Charlotte’s disappeared.’ Reece explained all that had happened since the attempt to free Luc. ‘I was nearly caught. I think they know who I am.’

  ‘Shit,’ Thomas muttered. ‘Do we need to clear out?’

  ‘Not yet. We have to track Charlotte down. She has the photographs.’

  ‘How? We don’t even know her real name.’

  ‘There’s something she told me once. It might help.’ He hoped it would. He had doubts, strong doubts. ‘But listen, I need to sit down before I fall down.’

  Thomas led him into a single-room flat with one corner dedicated to a miniature kitchen. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Thomas went to a cupboard and retrieved a loaf of black bread and a little dried sausage. Reece could see it was the last that he had – all that was left in the cupboard was a bunch of carrots. Everyone ate carrots endlessly these days because they weren’t rationed, some eating so many that their skin gained an orange tint.

  ‘My wallet’s full of coupons, but there’s nothing in the bloody shops to spend them on,’ Thomas said. He went to a small stove, poured sawdust into it and placed a pot on top, stirring oats into watered-down milk to make a thin porridge. He unwrapped a little stick of cinnamon taken from the back of the cupboard and grated it into the pot so there would be some flavour. Reece tore into the bread and meat. There was a pile of books in the corner. He noted a few of the authors: Kafka, Freud, Zweig. ‘Before they’re burned,’ Thomas explained quietly. ‘I know, it could bring attention. But we all have to try to save something.’

  Reece stared at his food. The lives in those books, the lives that wrote them. All destined, perhaps, for death.

  ‘You’re filthy too. Want some fresh clothes?’

  Reece felt itching grime all over his body. ‘I would, thanks. Is there any chance you have access to a radio – not civilian, something like Charlotte’s set? Something on high frequencies?’

  ‘No, sorry.’ Thomas sounded bemused. ‘I’ve just got that thing.’ He pointed to a radiogram in the corner of the room. ‘What do you need it for?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’ He was desperate to try again to listen to the transmissions he and Sebastien had come across. If they never found Charlotte, this might just be another way to unravel Parade’s plan. Yet internal security demanded that information be shared only if strictly necessary – failing to observe this rule had brought the circuit to where they were now: Richard dead, Charlotte absconded. He had told Thomas about Charlotte, but that had been necessary because he needed Thomas’s help to look for her.

  Thomas gazed at him then went to a cupboard and lifted out some clean clothes. He put a small pot of water on the stove and took a thin, hard bar of soap from a drawer under the sink. ‘When it’s warm you can wash with it,’ he said. They sat for a while until Reece
had eaten. Then he peeled away his clothes, washed in the lukewarm water and pulled on the underwear and shirt Thomas had given him. He was surprised how much better he felt for being something close to clean, with some food in his stomach. He felt able to plan now.

  ‘So, we find her,’ Thomas said.

  ‘We find her,’ Reece echoed resolutely. Find her, know her – although even if he discovered her in the Gestapo’s cells and every splinter of evidence showed that she had been loyal to SOE from the beginning he would have to admit to himself that he still knew her only on the surface, like a figure passing by a mirror.

  ‘Good. Then how do we go about it?’

  Reece tugged the curtain from the streaked window and checked outside. He let it fall back into place. ‘She used to play piano in bars.’ He had tried to think of anything else that would give them a clue to finding her. Her clothes had been supplied by SOE; she had never discussed her schooling or her job, other than playing piano. Each time she had told him which part of Paris she was from it had changed. Direct questions about her earlier life had been shrugged away. Reece had cudgelled his thoughts, grabbing for just one unrecalled piece of information that could help, but little else emerged. She had kept it all back. He had to admit she had been more careful than he had.

  ‘So? We can’t ask about her if we don’t know her real name.’ Reece reached into his wallet and drew out a folded photograph. He opened it out to show the picture that had been taken of Charlotte and himself in front of Notre-Dame.

  ‘It was for cover. When we had to present as a couple,’ Reece said in reply to Thomas’s surprised expression. He could see the scepticism in the way his friend’s mouth turned in response. He tore the photograph in half, ripping himself out of the picture to leave Charlotte. Her eyes were on the paved ground, as if sadness had enveloped her.

  ‘All right, it’s a start, but are we going to show this around every bar in Paris where they had live music? It would take a month to go around them all – and the Gestapo would get wind pretty quickly.’

  ‘We can narrow it down. She said she played for Sorbonne students.’

  ‘So we try the Latin Quarter first, but that’s still forty bars.’

  ‘It’s a chance.’ He drank some warm water. ‘Have you got a map?’

  Thomas tossed a stack of junk off the lid of a trunk. He hunted through and stood up a minute later with a creased map in one hand and a thick book in the other. ‘This might help,’ he said, holding up the book. It was the Pages Jaunes, the city business telephone directory.

  ‘You’re right about that.’ Reece took the map and unfolded it on to the bed. A wave of tiredness hit him and he wavered.

  ‘Look, give that to me.’ Thomas took the Pages Jaunes, leaving Reece to slump back against the wall in tiredness, and flicked through the sections – legal services, butchers, coal merchants – until he found the section for bars. He went through the listings, noting some down on a pad. Reece watched him for a minute but struggled to keep his eyelids from falling. He lay down on the bed.

  He woke with Thomas’s gentle grip on his shoulder.

  ‘I didn’t know whether to let you sleep properly.’

  ‘No, I can’t. Not yet,’ Reece mumbled.

  Thomas held up the notepad. ‘We have this. The most likely bars.’ He sat on the bed, giving Reece time to come back to life. ‘The Latin Quarter’s where I first lived in Paris,’ he mused. Reece knew that Thomas had studied architecture in the city for a couple of years. ‘It was a hell of a lot more exciting than Aberdeen, I can tell you that. So many people. Parties all the time. Music. Poetry. So much dreadful poetry.’ Reece chuckled. ‘A bit different these days.’

  ‘That’s for certain.’

  ‘When do you think it’s coming?’ Thomas asked.

  Reece wanted to tell him that in a few months’ time an armada of ships would power through the waves and British, American and Canadian troops would stream on to land to hammer the Boche into the ground. He couldn’t. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I do know that what we’re doing, you and me, right now, is important for it.’ There was silence as they both lost themselves in their thoughts.

  ‘God, I could do with a decent meal. A shopkeeper up the road has bought a pig for his cellar,’ Thomas said. ‘He’s promised me a couple of bits. The heart, if I’m lucky.’

  ‘Tasty.’

  ‘I was thinking of raising a couple of rabbits in here,’ Thomas added, looking around the room.

  ‘Sounds easier.’

  ‘Yeah. I could break a rabbit’s neck, but slaughtering a pig takes some nerve.’ He went to the sideboard and took a small wooden box from a drawer, opening it to reveal two sugar cubes wrapped in pristine white paper and offering them to Reece. ‘Here. You could probably do with the energy.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Reece said. He knew this was as much as Thomas would have for a week. He placed one in his mouth and savoured the sweetness. For a moment, it was almost like the time before the war. The other cube he carefully put inside his jacket pocket.

  ‘Here’s one. A German says to a Frenchman, “I hear you’re eating rats now.” The Frenchman replies, “If only! All the real rats are gone. Now we only have ersatz rats.”’ Thomas raised a smile. ‘Why don’t we hit Maxim’s while Göring’s there?’

  ‘Don’t think you’re the first to come up with that idea. He has all the tables around him cleared and his guards wouldn’t take kindly to any attempt.’

  ‘A bomb – the RAF?’

  ‘Very difficult to be so precise. And we would kill a lot more Frenchmen.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ Thomas said. ‘You know something? I’m glad they’re looting the country.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because for the first few weeks after they arrived the French were all frightened of these huge, efficient warriors. Then they began stuffing their suitcases with jewellery and the French realized they’re little better than petty criminals. Do you know what I heard them called the other day?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Colorado beetles. Because they eat all the potatoes.’ He laughed. Then he sighed.

  ‘How many bars do we have?’ Reece asked, pointing to the notepad.

  ‘Twenty-eight. Shall we go now?’

  ‘Later tonight,’ Reece replied. ‘I’ve got something else to do first.’

  ‘Do you need anything?’

  ‘Yes. A sledgehammer.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Move by day and stick to roads, unless circumstances require you to move by stealth (e.g. in prohibited zones). Do not move in a group of more than two. At night, if you meet a motor car or bicycle, hide. Beware of curfew and dusk hour. Move at rush hours.

  Jeder einmal in Paris – ‘Everyone one time in Paris’ – had been German military policy since 1940. All the troops would visit once. It was to be a playground for the tired servicemen, led through the city by the Guide Aryen, which told them the best places to enjoy themselves before they returned to their bombing missions, undersea hunts or bitter fights caked in the sand of North Africa. The soldatenbordell – soldiers’ brothels – in which women were forcibly penetrated scores of times each day for fifteen minutes per soldier were not listed in those publications. Reece guessed that the seven or eight guffawing young soldiers entering what looked to be a requisitioned hotel near the Trocadero were there for that purpose.

  When Hitler visited Paris after its capture in 1940 he had been famously photographed in the hilltop Trocadero park of gardens and small palaces with the Eiffel Tower below, brooding in the background as if it were awaiting his departure. Since then, German soldiers had slung a banner from the iron edifice: Deutschland siegt auf allen Fronten, it read. ‘Germany is victorious on all fronts.’ They had had to climb up to hang it because the French had cut the power cables to the lifts.

  Reece glanced at it now as he rode in the evening darkness and trusted the day would soon come when the banner fell and the Nazis’ stench no longer h
ung over the gardens.

  The street was virtually empty as he cycled – even in the city centre, petrol was so scarce that you could watch a major road for an hour during the day and see just ten cars go by. Buses had fallen in number by three quarters, replaced by cycle-taxis sporting slogans such as ‘Speed, comfort, security’ and by horse-drawn carriages. It was strange to Reece that the new-found quiet of the streets seemed not charming but oppressive and ominous. Perhaps it was the fact that you now heard conversations conducted on the other side of the road – no one’s life was private any more. All words had to be considered before they were uttered.

  He pedalled past the Trocadero and stopped in front of two large iron gates opposite the Museum of Mankind, the seat of learning and culture that had been the headquarters of one of the very first réseaux, back in 1940. That year seemed a lifetime ago. Paris was another city now – one that, as the cars and crowds had left, had become cleaner, less abrasive and quiet as the grave. He despised how deathly it seemed under the palm of the German officers who swarmed about as if they belonged there.

  After chaining Thomas’s bike to a tree he clicked together a padlock that his fellow agent had found in a wooden lean-to at the bottom of the garden behind his flat.

  That was also where they had found a sledgehammer, which Reece had wrapped in newspaper pages. Thomas had offered him some old sheets from Le Temps, the journal of record that had closed two years previously after refusing to print collaborationist propaganda, but Reece had eschewed even that subtle act of defiance and found a few abandoned pages from an officially sanctioned rag in the gutter outside. He had strapped the tool to his back with rough garden twine. As he rode, it had chafed long red lines in his flesh, but that was hardly the worst of his privations now.

  In front of him, a series of square columns constructed from white stone blocks rose five or six metres tall. They were set into a high wall that extended to the left and right, curving around to enclose a roughly triangular area of ground, each of its sides about two hundred metres long. Between the stone columns two intricately cast iron gates stood closed.