The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  He walked on, watchful, a few more metres to where he knew the path bent to the left and opened up the vista of the graveyard: hundreds of plots and headstones, miniature temples with altars dedicated to family saints. His feet crunched over stones and hardened soil. To remain unobserved, he slipped into the portico of a white stone sepulchre with ivy creeping up its walls and a long-extinguished candle on a narrow altar. The ceiling had part collapsed, leaving chunks of masonry on the floor. It would do for an observation point. A large brown rat ran from behind the altar, out on to the path.

  Reece scanned the cemetery, looking first towards the top-left-hand corner where Charlotte’s father’s grave lay, the headstone lying in pieces. When Charlotte had told Reece that her father had died just before the Germans entered Paris and was buried overlooking the Eiffel Tower, it was just about the first and last time she had ever let him into her real life. Now, he was using it as bait to draw her in.

  No one around. It would be safe to explore further in. He began to step out but halted sharply. Two people were emerging from behind another serpentine coil in the path: a small, slim man and a woman in a brown fur coat.

  He knew the way she moved. The way she turned her body.

  It was the first time he had seen her since the flames had risen around her in her safe house. It felt like he had opened his eyes into bright, piercing sun: the truth was there, presenting itself to him, but it was hard to make it out amidst all the noise and glare. He was wary that his will would twist the facts, making her loyal still to her country, when such loyalty was a chimera. He told himself to keep something back.

  Carefully, he edged out, ready to call over, to have her explain what had happened. But the sound of rapid footsteps clipping behind him made him stop once more. A German corporal was running up the path.

  Reece drew back inside and crouched. He couldn’t yet tell the true nature of the situation – whether the German had come to arrest him or her. Stealthily, he took one of the chunks of stone from the floor to use as a weapon. It was heavy and pointed and he could wait until the soldier passed and then stave in the back of his skull. But he would have to wait.

  Charlotte continued walking, deep in discussion with the small man to her side. She hadn’t seen the German. The soldier drew level with Reece. Hidden in the tomb’s shadows, he lifted the stone.

  ‘Miss Dubois!’ cried the soldier.

  Charlotte looked up. ‘Where have you been?’ she replied. The same tones as ever, slow and deep. ‘You were meant to be here half an hour ago.’ The tension left Reece’s muscles as the undeniable realization crashed on to his shoulders.

  It should have been obvious from the start. France had turned blind eyes and deaf ears to all the horrific sights and sounds around. Its people had pretended their friends and neighbours weren’t informants and collaborators. He had pretended that Charlotte wasn’t among them. Now the part of him that had known all along was asserting the truth.

  He let his hand fall to his side, the stone cracking against the top of the altar. The sound was followed by a shallow echo.

  At the noise, the German stopped and looked around. Reece pressed himself to the wall, just metres away from the man, holding his breath and trusting himself to the shades, ready to spring out if he had to. Now he could no longer see them; he could only listen, blind.

  He heard a footstep. Then more, slowly coming closer. They were heavy, crunching the winter frost and stiff twigs underfoot. The soldier.

  ‘Is someone there?’ the corporal demanded. Two more footsteps. But the German must have heard only a sound behind him, unsure where it came from. Another footstep and another, but they were moving away from Reece – to the opposite tomb, it seemed, which had an iron gate across its entrance. Reece stowed himself behind the altar. He heard the gate on the other sepulchre open on whining hinges. Then another sound, like a stone kicked against a wall. He chanced a glance out. Rats were scurrying under the gate, away from whatever the soldier had booted at them. Would the soldier check the white stone tomb in which Reece was crouching? Maybe he could slip out while the German was still looking into the one across from him, and run, like the rats, around the back of the shrunken Grecian temple. He readied himself to do it, but then the feldgrau jacket turned towards him and he dropped down behind the altar again. He picked up the stone and tensed, ready to attack. He would take the soldier first and seize his gun. Then he would face the other two.

  The footsteps crunched closer on the path. The sound changed, clicking on the stone steps up into the portico. Something moved in the shadows, scuttling over Reece’s foot. Another rat in the gloom. From where he waited Reece could hear the corporal’s breathing, hoarse in the cold air. Another stride inside the sepulchre and he would be within striking distance. Reece’s hand was so tight on the stone it ached. Another step in. It was time.

  ‘What are you doing?’ It was her voice. Irritated and demanding. Reece held himself.

  The German snapped back to her. ‘I apologize. Just rodents.’

  ‘Leave them to the rat-catcher. We’re leaving. Now.’

  ‘Of course. The car is waiting.’

  Reece listened. The jackboots tapped once more on the stone step and then out on to the softer path.

  Those few words of hers told him everything. Now he knew her for what she was something hardened inside him.

  ‘All right,’ he heard her say. He chanced a look from the shadows. The soldier had his back to Reece. And finally, she came into his line of sight, her dark hair falling across her cheek. She pulled it behind her ear. He remembered that action too from before. ‘I’m coming now.’ They moved along the path.

  It passed through his mind that he could attack. He could rush out, knock the German’s legs away and strike him down with the stone. But if the German were alert, he could well minimize Reece’s attack, and then it would be three against one.

  Besides, he needed to question her about the photographs of the SS document – where they were, what she had seen in them – and that could hardly be done here. No, he had to wait. He slipped out from behind the altar and pressed himself to the wall, watching them filter via the path towards the exit. As they reached it, he crept out.

  The small, grimy man was nervously squeezing his cap in his hands as the other two disappeared from sight. As a car started up, Reece emerged and strode to the entrance. The little man looked surprised by his presence.

  ‘Good morning,’ Reece said, affecting a calm air, as if the man had simply failed to notice him enter earlier.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Reece looked along the road. There was only one car in sight. A black Citroën Traction Avant. Only the Germans and collaborators had cars at all, and the black Traction Avant was known as the car of the German intelligence services. He had seen men and women bundled into these cars, their eyes closed up with bruises. But Charlotte wasn’t a prisoner: the car was hers. He saw it at the end of the road.

  ‘You’re open earlier than I thought.’

  ‘We had to. For someone important.’

  ‘Who was that?’ Reece asked.

  ‘I shouldn’t say,’ the man replied, a little warily now.

  ‘No, you’re very professional, aren’t you?’ Reece said, smiling. ‘I hope you’re paid properly.’ He wished there was time for a more subtle approach, but he had only seconds. He drew his wallet from his pocket. ‘Can I buy you a drink as a token of appreciation for your work?’ The man hesitated and glanced around. Then he peered at the twenty-franc note in Reece’s hand and the tip of his tongue touched his lower lip. He was clearly struggling with the idea of revealing the woman’s name – after all, telling people names was something that got you into trouble these days.

  ‘I … really, sir, I shouldn’t.’ He seemed tempted, but the risk of German fury outweighed the money. Money wouldn’t be enough.

  And then Reece noticed a ring of keys swinging from the man’s hip. Among them was a small metal object: a wei
ght that perfectly equalled the daily meat allowance – a popular keepsake among hungry townsfolk who wanted to ensure they got every gram to which they were entitled.

  ‘Do you eat well? How would you like extra coupons? A full three months’ worth.’ Reece pulled from his pocket the book full of coupons – freshly delivered in the last drop – that Thomas had given him that morning to replace those destroyed by the river water. ‘You could have beef on Sunday. Would you like that?’ And that was the man’s price. He nodded greedily and snatched for the money and coupons. Reece held them away. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Dubois. Clémence Dubois,’ the caretaker said reluctantly.

  And then Reece had her first name to add to the family name he had seen on her father’s grave. He knew her from beginning to end.

  Clémence Dubois. It was hard to attach it to the woman he had known as Charlotte. It seemed far less real, less natural, to him than the name he had repeated by night and day.

  Reece handed over the money and the coupons. There would be no going back now for the man. ‘Her address?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was only told Miss Dubois would be coming.’

  ‘Do you know anything more about her?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He twisted his cap in his hands as if it could offer him some protection against whatever he was getting into now. ‘I was just told she was coming, that’s all. She was upset about the headstone. Her – her father’s headstone,’ he stammered. ‘It was broken up. Thieves, or … or …’ He stared at Reece as something dawned on him.

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  The man hesitated. Reece gave him a five-franc note. ‘She didn’t say anything to me. But she told the driver to go to Saint-Cloud.’

  ‘Where in Saint-Cloud?’

  ‘She didn’t say. She just said Saint-Cloud. That’s all.’

  That meant it was to an address they went to frequently. Reece dropped his attempt to appear calm and ran to his bike. He couldn’t let Charlotte slip away into the streets of Paris.

  He set off at speed in the direction her car had taken, towards the city centre. The conversation with the caretaker had lasted barely a minute and cars drove slowly these days, running on low-grade fuel. If they were heading for Saint-Cloud, a working-class commune on the western edge of the city, they would cross the Seine at the pont de Saint-Cloud.

  He sped along the avenue Paul Doumer in their wake, towards the huge bois de Boulogne park, hurling around corners and between other riders, some of them shouting at him in anger. There were no more than five vehicles sputtering along the route de la Reine and he wove between them. Then there were two more cars on the steel bridge to Saint-Cloud: a battered old dark-red Peugeot and a black Citroën. Her car.

  The thought that she was inside somehow gripped him in a tight clasp and he squeezed on his brakes. His heart beat hard, more than the sprint behind it. The Peugeot steered in front of him and he was grateful that it would hide him. He needed time to decide on his course of action. A direct assault on her right now would be impossible. No, he had to see where she was going and only then form a plan.

  The Citroën pushed on over the Seine. A police van crossed Reece’s path, and he heard singing from inside: Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé. Singing the Marseillaise was illegal. The only people who would do it in the open were those already on their way to the execution grounds. His knuckles turned white on the handlebars as he remembered Luc, now facing the same fate, at the hand of the woman in the car.

  They passed into the poorer suburb of Saint-Cloud and the car turned into a dead-end street lined with houses built in the nineteenth century for the artisans and skilled workers romanticized by Zola. The bricks had been baked locally and laid unevenly and the timbers were bowed. And yet there was a sense of unity there, as if the street and its residents had all made peace with their fate.

  Dismounting at the mouth of the road, he saw the car stop in front of one of the houses, one with an elm tree outside. A child’s swing hung from the thick branches.

  Charlotte emerged from the car and went in through the front door. Reece propped his bike against a hedge and fiddled with the chain for a few minutes, pretending that it was causing problems. He could have skulked behind trees or in shadows and attempted to remain unseen, but the location was too open – someone passing by would have seen him and become suspicious. No, right now, the best option would be to hide in plain sight.

  The corporal also got out of the car, and idly stared around, his gaze eventually falling on Reece. Reece shrank down, hoping the man would ignore him. But his luck didn’t hold.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ the man shouted over in German-accented French.

  ‘Twisted,’ Reece replied. He cursed inwardly. It would be impossible now to follow them without being challenged.

  ‘Need a hand?’

  Reece considered. If he got chatting to this man, he might be able to draw out some information about Charlotte – where she went, whom she met. But just as he was about to accept the offer she came out once more, having changed into a cream skirt and jacket and a yellow overcoat against the frost. ‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Reece called, turning his back to them.

  ‘Please yourself.’ The man helped Charlotte into the car, settled himself into the driver’s seat and drove away, leaving Reece by the side, watching their departure. He couldn’t follow them, but now he knew where she lived.

  He remounted his bike and rode into the commercial part of Saint-Cloud to buy the necessary tools. In a side street he found a hardware shop and picked out a kitchen knife with a wooden handle. There were more lethal-looking blades there, but the one he came away with would do well enough and would raise less suspicion if he were stopped. A radio in the corner was whining out a man’s voice. ‘Henriot is on,’ the shop-owner informed him, pointing at the machine. It took Reece a few seconds to grasp that he was expecting Reece to show an interest in the furious words of Vichy’s main propagandist.

  Reece stopped to listen for a minute, as the man seemed to want him to: some sort of test, perhaps. It was the normal torrent of hatred. Last night’s RAF raid on Lyon had left hundreds dead, it seemed. It was doubtful if that was true.

  No, France wasn’t short of collaborators, radiating through the airwaves or hurrying on the pavements of the towns and cities. They all had their reasons: a belief that Catholic France had been brought to its knees by atheists, Jews and Communists; greed; a desire for power over others in a life spent in servitude; sheer hunger. But it did make Reece consider that Charlotte must have a reason. Whatever it was, it had brought her to the Germans, or the Germans to her, and he tried to work out if that motive might be something he could follow and use.

  When Henriot had finished, Reece continued browsing in the shop, picking out a few more items; a multi-tool knife that he selected after opening out ten of them, a length of strong twine and a few small screwdrivers. He placed them all in a small cloth satchel that cost six francs.

  When he came to pay for the knife, the shop-owner charged him double because he didn’t have one to bring in to exchange. ‘The metal shortages, right?’ the man said, a faint suspicion in his voice.

  ‘It broke and my wife threw it away,’ Reece replied. The man shrugged and reiterated the increased price.

  On the way out, walking along the street to where his bike was chained, Reece tried to picture her with the face of the young German he had killed with his stiletto knife during the ambush of the prisoner transport to Amiens. It would be easier, he thought, if he saw her as a German soldier. Reece had felt nothing but adrenalin when he slipped the blade into the man’s lung and windpipe. Nazis were inhuman beasts. There was no point crying for them, no more than you would cry for a pig on its way to slaughter.

  He saw her death as the final frames in a movie reel: a depiction of life, but unreal. The previous scene had shown them together in her bed, their bodies hot in each other. It dragged him away
from his purpose, sapping his will to end it all with her hollow death in a narrow street. And yet the arithmetical calculation of her death against thousands of Allied troops was irreproachable.

  He slowed his step, considering. Was there another way? He could contact Fisherman, give Sebastien her name and let them hunt her down and dispose of her. But there wasn’t time for such an op. And it would raise many questions about how much he knew and when.

  He found himself back at the entrance to her road. He steeled himself and rode in, continuing to the end, passing gardens that had been turned into tiny, impotent farms. Many of the houses looked closed up, although any tell-tale wooden boards across their windows would have long since gone into stoves for warmth. One house had a number of women coming and going, all carrying cooking pots: a communal kitchen set up to save on precious gas.

  He returned to her house. There was no light on and no other sign of life when he rapped loudly on the door, ready to rush anyone who answered. He circled around to the rear of the row. There was a tumbling fence behind the house and he easily scrambled over, hoping that no one had noticed him enter, then he approached a back door that looked as if it hadn’t been opened that century. On one side, a small wooden outhouse blocked it from the neighbours’ vision. The other side was open, though, so he would have to work quickly and hope no one was watching.

  He crouched and examined the lock. It was an old-fashioned design. He took the multi-tool clasp knife and a flat-headed screwdriver from the satchel then inserted the screwdriver into the lock, turned it as if it were a key until he felt it connect with the metal inside, putting pressure on the mechanism. Holding it in place with his left hand, he took the clasp knife and selected a tool designed for removing stones from horses’ hooves. It was long and thin, with a hook on the end, and would do as a pick.

  Like a dentist probing a gum, Reece delicately felt around with the hook for the furthest pin in the lock. He found it and pushed it up until he heard it click. He withdrew the tool very slightly until he found the next pin and kept going until all were aligned in their slots.