The Little Parachute

by J. Robert Janes

  Kraus, she gasped inwardly, her heart racing. They were all alone on the road. There was no one in sight, just that cursed car of his, its driver behind the wheel and one other sitting in the front while the Sturmbannführer paused as he got out of the back to grin and then to laugh at her.

  Perhaps thirty metres separated them. He crooked a forefinger, motioning her to come to him. She swallowed tightly.

  With what seemed to take ages, she walked the bike towards him. The wind tugged at her dress and made it flap. It bared her bare legs, revealed her knees, was cold and hot and everything in between.

  ‘Bonjour,’ she managed.

  Kraus had come forward of the car so that now they faced each other alone.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ he demanded.

  Involuntarily she shivered. ‘Nothing. I … I’m on my way to work, Sturmbannführer. I’m late enough as it is.’

  With the wind, the flowered print dress clung to every cleft. The simple, pale grey-blue knitted cardigan was open. Buttons ran down the front, buttons as on the dress of Véronique Dussart.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ he snorted, coming so close he blocked the wind but forced her to look him in the face. ‘You’ve friends. Your sentence of death has been lifted by another.’

  Was he going to hit her, grab her by the hair and force her to come with him in that car? ‘I … I don’t know what you mean. A sentence of death?’

  Lies … This one would always lie, thought Kraus. The sand-coloured hair was tied severely back. The wide-set, grey eyes were furtive. The chest rose as she sucked in a breath and prepared herself for the fist. So gut. Ja, gut!

  Quickly he told her about the body that had been found. Instantly she crossed herself and bowing her head, turned away in tears and then thought better of it and turned back. Shutting her eyes, she squeezed tears and he watched as they ran down those softly tanned cheeks, the wind flattening them so that they didn’t touch her lips.

  ‘Has the terrorist Ledieu received the pencil?’

  She tried not to cry but it was hopeless. Martin was out there among the fields, creeping up on Bois Carré. Martin … ‘Yes. Yes, my son returned it to him.’

  Her “son”. Kraus pulled the bicycle from her, she releasing her hold on it.

  Thrown onto the verge, its front wheel turned and Angélique saw the spokes amid the swaying wildflowers. They were like a late summer’s day of freedom, a beautiful tableau, and she wished with all her heart that she was but gathering them, but he stood behind her. Now she could only see that big, black ugly car whose driver, and the one other, were watching.

  ‘Make sure Ledieu suspects nothing.’

  When she didn’t answer, he shrieked at her, she leaping to cry out, ‘Yes, damn you! Yes,’ and weep.

  They drove off. Long after the sound of their car was gone, the sound of it stayed with her until she cried out in anguish, ‘VÉRONIQUE!’ and then, ‘MARTIN, PLEASE DON’T DO IT!’

  But Martin couldn’t hear her. Martin was lying among the tall, waving maize whose ears were golden and bursting at their pods, so much so, the dry under-leaves were a rough parchment that rattled whenever touched by himself or the wind.

  Three soldiers were just upslope of him at the edge of the forest and they were bored with their job of guarding Bois Carré. They lounged about and constantly smoked cigarettes. Though he couldn’t understand their muted, often broken bits of conversation, he thought it was of girls, of whores they had fornicated with, and of home.

  Bread and women, he said to himself. Beer and salt, and turning over onto his back, lay between the furrows looking up through the stalks to the cloud-drifted sky above.

  The parachute was of dark blue, almost black silk. There were silver clouds on it and silver stars and shooting stars and, yes, a big yellow moon, and as he had come slowly down from above at night, he had guided it by pulling in on the straps or letting others out until, with a touch and a quick roll, he had landed in the darkness.

  No one could ever have seen him because the parachute was invisible against the night sky. It was special. But now the Germans would begin to look for it and now there was but little time.

  Pulling himself forward, he squirmed away towards the north so as to get around the sentry post. His father would have wanted him to do this for the Mademoiselle Isabelle who was so pretty and risked her life constantly.

  The faint scent of her perfume came to him in memory, of jasmine, yes, and sandalwood, of other things too. She was everything Angélique wasn’t and he knew he was in love with her and that he would gladly die for her.

  The ruined hut on the Monts de Caubert was close, and when a leaf stirred outside, Marie-Hélène stiffened and gingerly felt the razor-sharp edges of the broken bottleneck in her hand. The réseau de soie bleue had come for her. They would accuse and condemn and cry out harshly, ‘Marie-Hélène de Fleury, alias Isabelle Moncontre, alias Nadine Delaunay, alias Geneviève­ Vicomte, alias Martine Ecquevilly, you are hereby charged with …’

  Those were the names, the lives she had lived. Châlus would tell them everything he knew of her. They would be only too aware of what she had done. He really hadn’t been in the pays de Ponthieu, heading for Bois Carré. He had come back to Abbeville to warn them and to trap her.

  Would they beat her, force her to reveal how much Kraus really knew, how much she had withheld?

  The sous-préfet Allard would be the first to enter the hut. They’d all have to duck to avoid the lintel. The others would crowd in behind. The one with the revolver would stand behind Ledieu, the mayor, and a little to his right. He would notice the photograph that was beside her on the wall, but would it distract him?

  She must dart beneath Allard’s arm and fight her way between and past the other two, slashing the gun hand deeply, slashing the face, the wrist, the jugular until, colliding with Châlus, she had …

  Was it really him out there? she wondered. Had he really not been in Ponthieu as she had thought?

  Châlus was the only witness to what had happened in Lyon, the only survivor. Would he say to her, You were going to betray a ten-year-old boy who has lost his voice? Would he have her thrown against the wall to demand, How could any woman do such a thing?

  Would she spit at him and try to smile in contempt? Would she cry out, Because I have to! Because I agreed to do what I did for love?

  Ah no, not love, she confessed. Born into wealth and privilege, you craved it.

  The door was broken, its weathered, unpainted boards splintered. Nudged, it swung in on its leather hinges as she silently prepared herself and said, Please God …

  ‘Marie-Hélène?’

  ‘Hans … ?’

  The neck of the bottle smashed against the wall, she tossing the thing aside and taking two half steps. As he ducked to enter, she threw herself at him and fought to kiss him hard and bury his head against her breasts, to hug and hold him and cry out, ‘Hans … Hans, is it really you?’

  Laughing, crying, she found his lips again, found his neck and, wrapping arms tightly about it, pulled herself hard against him. ‘In,’ she cried. ‘In, Hans. Please! I have to have you in me.’

  She tried to drag him to the floor. She lay in the rubbish, pulling at the buttons of her shirt-blouse, opening it, tugging at her brassiere until it was above her breasts and he was looking down at her and saying, ‘Liebchen, easy, eh? We haven’t much time.’

  ‘It doesn’t take much!’

  He laughed, he grinned and yes, it was good to hear him do so but …

  ‘We’re not peasants,’ he said.

  She was breathing hard and as he watched, her hands moved down to hike her skirt, but he shook his head and told her not to be so silly—silly!—that there would be plenty of time for such. ‘Weeks, months, you’ll see.’

  Something must have happened. Beneath that veneer of his, there w
ere deep shadows and she knew then that in spite of the laughter and the smiles, he was afraid.

  ‘Berlin,’ she said, pulling down her brassiere. ‘It’s Berlin, isn’t it?’

  How quick she was to read his mind and see the truth.

  Dirksen helped her up and brushed her off as she buttoned her shirt-blouse and tucked it into the waistband of her skirt.

  ‘Kraus doesn’t just want my assignment,’ he said. ‘Abbeville­ is to be made an example of. Oberst Lautenschläger’s incompetence—his weakness towards the French—is to be exposed. He’s to be seen as a slacker at a time when the Reich can’t have any, and Kraus is here to do the necessary for the Reichsführer.’

  She tidied her skirt—couldn’t look at him now, needed time to adjust as he said, ‘All aspects of the Retaliatory One security are to be placed under SS command. Bois Carré and the parachutist are to be the excuse, Kraus the instrument, and Lautenschläger the Wehrmacht’s guilty party, to be retired in disgrace and oblivion. Kraus will then take over command completely.’

  ‘And you?’ she asked, hesitating.

  He picked bits of straw from her. ‘Am to be recalled.’

  ‘When?’

  How alarmed she was, how lost and frantic. ‘Three days. That’s all we have in which to wrap things up.’

  ‘But … but you just said we would have weeks, months together?’

  He had such a soft and gentle smile, sad, too, as he touched her cheek and brushed the backs of his fingers down it.

  She was desperate. ‘If we do it successfully, what then?’ she demanded.

  He would have to tell her. Only then would she do what had to be done. ‘Kraus still takes over. Berlin have something else in mind for me. I’m to be watched and toughened up. I’ve been too weak, too easy on the terrorists. Like Lautenschläger, I’ve failed.’

  ‘Yet we caught so many. Does that not mean anything?’

  A little impatience would suit. ‘Everything is subordinate to the security of those sites. The Americans will be devastated by what we do to London. Nearly a hundred sites are to be aimed at it on the first day. A hundred, Marie-Hélène, each firing twenty or thirty bombs in that day alone and every one of those of about a thousand kilos of high explosive. It’s so big the British will never recover and will sue for a peace the Americans will have to go along with.’

  Flying bombs … He really believed it too, and when Hans took out a cigarette and lit it, she saw how desperate he was. He didn’t like the tough approach, had always left that to others and had felt he was above such things.

  ‘You should have joined the Abwehr,’ she said. ‘Though they’ve done an awful lot of things just as terrible as the SS and its SD, it’s still far more of a gentleman’s service.’

  ‘The Abwehr,’ he said and grinned and tried to laugh at things but failed. ‘They’re still refusing to give me details of Thiessen or even acknowledging that one’s existence. They realize that the Führer and the Reichsführer Himmler have it in for them and that they’re fast losing out to the SS and our Sicherheitsdienst. By the end of the year, they’ll no longer exist. Sucked in by Himmler, dissolved, absorbed, whatever, even banished from the history books.’

  Moving closer, she put her hands on his chest. ‘Thiessen has to be Martin Bellecour’s father. Everything fits. The boy is convinced of it. Now, too, the Bellecour woman.’

  He drew away from her. ‘Even the yacht fits.’

  ‘The Alcyone,’ she said. ‘And where, please, did you find it—you did, didn’t you?’

  She had always wanted to know if the information she had gathered had been correct. ‘It was exactly where she said it would be. In Deauville.’

  Sighing, she said, ‘Then Anthony James Thomas really did remain in France and the boy is absolutely correct in thinking this.’

  ‘But is he really Raymond Châlus?’ asked Dirksen, stepping nearer to place the half-finished cigarette between her lips.

  Inhaling deeply, she quickly nodded. ‘The same. He has to be.’

  So Thiessen of the rue des Grands-Augustins was Châlus of the Lyon Perrache network and the boy’s father, but did it go deeper still? he wondered. Did it go right back to Perpignan and the Mirabeau escape line?

  Caressing the softness of her throat, he kissed her on the lips and said, ‘Stop worrying. We’ll get them.’

  ‘And then?’ she asked.

  They were so close now, she was trembling. ‘Spain. Madrid or Barcelona. You can take your pick.’

  Lightly Hans kissed her again. ‘And you?’ she asked, a whisper.

  The time had come. ‘It all depends on Kraus. He’s been putting the squeeze on you, hasn’t he?’

  In despair, she pressed her forehead against his chest and wished he would hold her tightly, but all he did was to ask again and she had to look up at him and answer, ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’ll never learn, will he?’

  She would give him no answer but would search his eyes, knowing now what he wanted of her—yes, of her!—but forcing him to say it.

  ‘What you tell him must trap him, Liebchen. Berlin must be convinced of it, and then made to see that with Kraus out of the way, I’ll have to remain in command.’

  One could only toss a dismissive hand at such idiocy. ‘They’ll simply bring in someone else,’ she said, furious with him.

  He was ready for her and, dismayed, she realized he’d been waiting for this very moment, that all along he’d been planning for it.

  ‘Not if I get tough with those we take. Not if Berlin hear of it, and they will.’

  He would do it too, and she could see this now and felt, yes, a sadness that could only deepen. ‘The loss of self, it’s not good, Hans. Come to Spain. Let’s leave all this before it’s too late for both of us.’

  ‘My brothers in the SS would only come after me and you know it. They wouldn’t give us a moment’s peace until they had hounded us down and killed us.’

  Giving her a moment to consider this, he asked, ‘What have you managed to find out so far?’

  Was it to be nothing between them now but business? ‘The réseau de soie bleue has as its committee, the mayor, the priest, Father Nicolas, and the sous-préfet Allard.’ Hans took out the small, black leather-bound notebook he had always used for such details and began to write down the death sentences she would give him. ‘The dentist Eugène Lefèvre, the foreman of one of Mayor Ledieu’s breweries, a Joseph Marchand, and an evader of the STO, a Jean-Pierre Gaudeau who hides out among the hortillonnages of his uncle. Also the legless brother of Véronique Dussart. That one may be able to fix the wireless set, but we shall see.’

  She had done amazingly well. ‘You deserve a medal,’ he quipped and grinned but knew she would only be upset with him for suggesting it. There were no medals for such as her. Besides, to publicly award her anything would be far too dangerous for her.

  ‘Allard is the tough one,’ she said coldly. ‘The constant doubter. The mayor tends to accept the obvious, though he questions things too. In a pinch, he and the sous-préfet will be formidable—they’re both former soldiers, as is Father Nicolas. Also Marchand, the foreman. In all the time I was with them last night, that one said nothing. He simply sized me up.’

  Methodically she finished the cigarette and was careful not to leave the butt lying around, even to brushing away the ashes from the wall where she had stubbed it out.

  ‘The STO evader Gaudeau has one of the old Lebel Modèle d’ordonnace.’

  ‘The eleven millimetre or the eight millimetre?’

  ‘The black powder, most likely.’

  He nodded to indicate that the former were still effective enough, though they could misfire due to that ammunition having been stored by the French since 1873. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Châlus-Thiessen is travelling in disguise as a priest and with a novice who is really
the résistante Yvette Rougement, that girl in Paris who helped the Bellecour woman. Châlus and Yvette went on to Noyelles-sur-Mer ostensibly to visit the graves of the war dead and will, I think, now be in position for a close look at Bois Carré. Kraus didn’t have them arrested. It’s not like him to leave such an opportunity.’

  Though hard and unyielding now, she was still terrified of Châlus and justifiably so but would have to be told the truth. ‘He’s letting you nail all of them and then lead him to Châlus. He knows Châlus is in the area, not just to find out what’s been going on in Bois Carré but also to put an end to you.’

  She turned away to prevent herself from breaking down, waited for Hans to comfort her, and when he didn’t, placed both hands against the wall and leaned on them to steady herself. ‘So I’m to be sacrificed, eh? Kraus sent my backup away, Hans. He did!’

  ‘What have you told him?’

  Emptily she answered, ‘He only knows about the mayor, I think, not of the others yet. The Gestapo Munk would have arrested them before we arrived had that one known of them.’

  ‘Then keep their names to yourself. Keep our Sturmbann­führer­ guessing.’

  Did he really think it would be so easy? ‘And what if Kraus comes for me; what then, Hans?’ she asked, facing him now.

  Another cigarette was dragged out and lighted to hide the truth, was that it? she wondered.

  ‘Tell him things are delicate, that you’re so close to being accepted, nothing must intrude.’

  Was Hans really so desperate? she wondered, and placing her back against the wall, folded her arms across her chest. ‘He’ll only see that I no longer have the wireless set—had you not thought of that?’

  Irritably he flicked ash away. ‘Tell him you left it in your room at the pension—tell him anything, damn it. Just stall that bastard for a little.’

  This wasn’t the Hans she had known. ‘And what if he’s aware I’m lying? What then?’

  He couldn’t look at her. ‘Deal with it. Kill him yourself. I’ll swear it wasn’t you.’