Corrosion—verdigris—its whitish-green encrustations were everywhere among the artillery shells from that other war of 1914–18. Buried in a hasty, shallow grave and discovered during the early stages of construction, there had been no choice but for them to have been exhumed.
Now the shells, all six hundred and eighty-two of them and all for the 10.5 cm Leichte Feldhaubitze, lay five and six deep in rows, and the dark warren of their maze held the boy.
Blood streamed from the damage the barbed wire had inflicted to Martin’s forehead, ears and hands. Tears mingled with it. His nose was abruptly wiped with the back of a hand. Terrified, cornered, he stared out at them.
‘He’ll soon want to vomit,’ said Lautenschläger. ‘Who, please, has allowed the loss of a grenade from his boot-top?’
They were gathered round, perhaps one hundred and fifty battle-hardened men, both Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. The wind was in the branches of the trees above and when no answer came, the colonel calmly said, ‘I’ll know the reason for such a loss, gentlemen, and then I will ask you all to leave. Please be sure to walk upwind of us and seek the highest ground.’
A Gefreiter stepped forward and to attention.
‘So another of my own men is at fault,’ breathed Lautenschläger sadly. ‘And what have you to say?’
‘He grabbed the grenade as he darted past me, Herr Oberst.’
‘Excellent. I commend the partisan valour that must run in his veins. You are now an Oberschutze.* Your sergeant fills your former rank. Both of you will suffer the loss of a month’s pay and be confined to barracks when not on duty.’
‘Jawhol, Herr Oberst.’
‘Now where were we?’ he continued and, indicating that Kraus should accompany him, walked to the downwind side of the dump. ‘The visibility is better here. You see, Sturmbannführer,’ he said, indicating Martin. ‘The boy understands fully the fundamentals of our stick grenades. He has unscrewed the cap at the base of the handle and has drawn out the pull-cord so as to hook a finger through its ring in readiness.’
‘I’LL DO IT, HERR OBERST! I’M WARNING YOU!’
‘Yes, yes, Martin. I’m very glad that you have found your voice. Allow me, please, to instruct the Sturmbannführer, then we’ll talk.’
‘TELL HIM TO LEAVE ANGÉLIQUE ALONE! TELL HIM THERE ISN’T ANY PARACHUTIST. THERE NEVER WAS.’
‘NO PARACHUTIST? HE’S LYING!’ shrieked Kraus.
‘Ach, ein Moment, bitte,’ urged Lautenschläger. ‘First, had you shot the boy, the force of the bullet would have carried him back and most assuredly it would have propelled the grenade from his hand, thus priming it.’
‘The Reichsführer und Reichsminister Himmler will hear of this!’
How tiresome. ‘Let us hope he doesn’t. The detonation would no doubt fail to carry that far but would, I am certain, leave a magnificent crater, ruined walls and foundations, and a cloud of mustard gas you would, if still alive, have trouble explaining.’
‘The boy is lying. He’s one of them. I knew it from the moment I set eyes on him and that supposed mother of his.’
‘No parachutist, Martin?’
The colonel had crouched so as to peer in at him through the coils of barbed wire and the signs. ‘No, Herr Oberst. It’s my little parachute. I drew it in the dust of a window at the avenue Foch and he must have seen it and thought I meant a real one. It was all a game, a way of telling myself how I came to be here in France.’
A game … ‘I’m a bachelor, Martin. I’ve been one all my life, so have never had children, but I think I’m beginning to understand. Sturmbannführer Kraus has made a mistake and …’
‘A BIG MISTAKE!’
‘He’s lying. Can’t you see that,’ hissed Kraus. ‘The boy’s father is a known terrorist!’
A résistant.
Martin withdrew from them in tears. They were bringing it all back. They were making him think things he didn’t want to. He huddled among the shells so that they couldn’t see him anymore. There was the smell of crushed geranium leaves and broken stems right next the ground and it did make his chest tighten and his head buzz, it did upset his stomach and increased the stinging in his eyes.
‘Martin, is this true?’ asked the colonel.
Was it true about his father … ? Angélique thought so. Angélique had always insisted his father was in England and safe, whereas he himself had recently come to believe that wasn’t so and that his father was alive and in France and with the Résistance, but then … then she had changed her mind and had agreed. His father had been living in the flat on the rue des Grands-Augustins ever since the Defeat and the road south from Paris, ever since the Messerschmitts. He had been using false papers and the identity of a German officer, a Leutnant Theissen. He had followed them from Paris dressed as a priest. The Mademoiselle Moncontre was one of his réseau. So was the girl with the vélo-taxi, the novice.
Martin stretched the pull-cord out until it was taut. Under his breath he said scathingly, ‘Angélique shouldn’t have lied to me like that. I forgive her, yes of course, but can’t allow the Sturmbannführer Kraus to torture me for fear I should cry out the name of another, that of the Mademoiselle Isabelle.’
Had the boy been speaking to himself? wondered Lautenschläger. ‘Martin … Martin, listen to me, please. I’m going to send the Hauptmann Scheel to fetch your mother. Let’s hold off doing anything until she arrives, but if you feel sick, crawl out from there. No one will shoot you. I give you my word. Stand beside the shells if you wish but do so upwind of them. It’s not good for you to breathe that stuff. It will burn your lungs and blister your skin. Even though it’s years since I was gassed, I still get blisters. It can make you blind.’
The boy threw up. Bent double, he retched several times. Lautenschläger held his breath and counted to three and then to five, but the grenade didn’t go off, and when Martin crawled out with it still in hand, the boy found he couldn’t stand up. When he spoke, his throat was suddenly torn and he panicked at the thought of losing his voice again.
Tears streamed from him. ‘I have to talk to Angélique,’ he croaked. ‘There is something really, really bad that I have to tell her.’
The minute hand of the clock in the Kommandantur hardly moved. The hour hand was impossible. Angélique was desperate. Martin had gone to Bois Carré hours ago and still she didn’t know what had happened to him. An “accident”? she wondered. A “tragedy”?
At first she had felt it a blessing that he couldn’t talk. Everyone would have known he was British. The Germans would have sent him to the internment camp at Besançon that was for British women and children who had such passports,* but now … now he wouldn’t even be able to cry out, to tell them to pull the dogs away.
No one had told her a thing, but all who had entered the Kommandantur, the Germans especially, had avoided looking at her. Word travelled so fast in the countryside. Whispers went right round the place, and well before the object of them was notified, everyone else knew about it. The death of a close relative or friend, an accident, a suicide, an arrest, it was all the same. One was left guessing, worrying, tearing one’s heart out while everyone else knew all about it and didn’t say a thing.
Frau Hössler attended to matters at the counter. The guard, a doughy-faced boy of seventeen, hesitated to let his prisoner see him stealing glances at her. Angélique would avert her eyes and he would chance a glimpse, but did he ask himself if he could kill her if an attempted escape was made? He sat so stiffly in a straight-backed chair beneath the clock and with his rifle awkwardly across his knees. She sat opposite him and, between them, along the adjacent wall from one French window to another, there was a long row of filing cabinets.
Those windows weren’t locked, not that she could see, but could she yank one of the drawers fully open and bolt outside? Could she run very far before the bullet hit her?
Monsieur
le maire had blustered his way around Frau Hössler. It had been really magnificent the show that poor, desperate man had put on. He had threatened the woman with disciplinary action—the encircling of the names on that list had been the Gestapo Munk’s doing, not his own. How could she have thought otherwise? Et cetera, et cetera.
The least the woman could expect would be a reprimand from the colonel; the worst, a stiff letter of dismissal.
But he hadn’t given the prisoner a glance—he hadn’t dared.
At 2.05 p.m. Father Nicolas entered to ask of him. ‘He is at one of his breweries,’ grumbled Frau Hössler. ‘The one, I believe, that is along the Transit Canal.’
‘What’s she done, then?’ he asked, giving a nod towards the prisoner.
‘She is waiting, that is all.’
‘Then why the guard?’
‘Because it is necessary.’
‘I was only tidying that list, Frau Hössler. You upset me and that is why I encircled as many names as I could. You didn’t trust me!’
‘Silence! You are not to speak unless spoken to.’
Father Nicolas grinned at the exchange and muttered, ‘Good. That’s as it should be. Women are best when silent. It saves the ears.’
‘I want to go to the toilet, Frau Hössler. I demand to go. Father, she is refusing to allow the most normal of requests.’
‘A pity. My dear Frau Hössler, let your prisoner at least visit the office of necessity.’
Blustering, the woman found the key and thrust it at him. ‘Then you are responsible, ja, and will escort her.’
They were outside and into the car before the guard realized what had happened. Helplessly the boy watched as they raced away among the ruins.
‘The sous-préfet Allard was driving,’ said the boy.
‘Oberst Lautenschläger and Sturmbannführer Kraus will hear of this,’ stormed Beate. ‘There is something going on that is not right.’
The brewery was beyond the ruins. They drove straight into the drying shed. The closeness of sacks of barley, hops and beet sugar gave a warm and pleasant smell to which was added the ever-present odour of fermenting wort. Monsieur le maire was at the rear of the building. He was rubbing a few kernels in a palm but tossed them away, a thing he would not normally have done. ‘Now, mademoiselle, we want the truth. I’m grateful, yes of course, for your attempt to hide my encircling of those names but who, please, are this priest and novice?’
They had surrounded her. The car was parked just inside the doors, which the sous-préfet had closed and bolted. ‘The priest is Martin’s father, a leader in the Résistance; the novice is his assistant.’
Doubt, alarm—so many things passed between them but not a word.
‘Together they have followed us to Abbeville but for what reason,’ she said, ‘I simply don’t know. Perhaps it’s that his father will try to reach the farm to get Martin and myself safely away, perhaps they have other things to do.’
Things like Bois Carré and finding out what was going on there.
It was Father Nicolas who asked of the pencil and she knew then that monsieur le maire and the sous-préfet had agreed beforehand that the priest should be the one to confront her.
As quickly as she could she told them everything that had happened in Paris. They were sickened by it.
‘And the note, the message I found?’ asked Ledieu in despair.
‘Herr Dirksen used it to show me how messages would be sent but it was only a cigarette paper. There wasn’t anything written on it, was there?’
‘Herr Dirksen … ?’ he asked.
‘Yes. The Standartenführer.’
‘Ah, mon Dieu, Nicolas … Théodore, what is this she’s saying?’
It had happened. The bottom had fallen out of everything. ‘That we face an almost certain death,’ said Allard. ‘The others must be warned at once.’
‘Wait! Tell us, please, of the Mademoiselle Moncontre,’ said Ledieu.
Sadly she told him. ‘Martin is in love with her. He’ll do anything for her, even to trying to find out what is going on in Bois Carré. He’s there now. I’m certain he is, but … but I don’t know what has happened to him.’
They ignored her concern for Martin. They didn’t have time for it.
‘Did you know she had brought us a wireless transmitter?’
‘The suitcase …’
‘Yes. Did you know she had warned us that your priest and his novice might be infiltrators?’ demanded Ledieu sharply.
‘But … but why would she do that? She’s with them. They’re all from the same réseau. They must be.’
It was the sous-préfet who said, ‘She knew of Véronique, mademoiselle, and we now realize she was responsible for that one’s death.’
This was crazy. It was insane. ‘But how could she have known of Véronique? That’s just not possible.’
‘Impossible, yes,’ said Allard grimly, ‘unless she had been forewarned by the SS, and Véronique posed a risk she could not live with.’
Angélique blanched. ‘A risk … ? I’m not hearing this, messieurs. Martin believes in her absolutely.’
‘But do you?’ asked Father Nicolas.
‘Yes! She proved it on two occasions in Paris. Ah! you’re very wrong. She was almost caught and had to hide on the roofs nearby.’
Again they looked from one to another. The need for haste tugged at them. ‘Please tell us about these “occasions”,’ said Ledieu. ‘Go carefully. Give the smallest details.’
‘Honoré, we haven’t time!’ said Allard, clenching a fist.
‘What has she done, please?’ asked Angélique.
‘Done?’ he answered. ‘She has betrayed us all.’
‘Then why haven’t you been arrested?’
‘That is what we wish to know. Perhaps it is that she hasn’t yet given Kraus and the others our names; perhaps it is that they are simply waiting until she can point the finger at all of us.’
‘A Judas,’ swore Ledieu. ‘I trusted her. I vouched for her.’
‘We all did,’ cautioned Father Nicolas. ‘The shame of it is on each of our heads.’
‘If only that wireless set of hers would work,’ said Allard sadly. ‘If only those tubes hadn’t been deliberately broken.’
‘Henri is working on it,’ muttered Ledieu absently, his mind torn by other matters. ‘Henri will do the best he can on such short notice.’
Henri Vallin was the legless brother of Véronique Dussart. His shop, if such was what one could call it, was in a converted garage he shared with his parents. He had the front half of the building, the living quarters were at the back and above in the loft, and Marie-Hélène could see through to the makeshift kitchen where the mother was sitting alone and weeping.
A sawdust burner, one of those converted oil-drum stoves, sat in a corner gathering dust until the cold weather. The clutter was everywhere. He dabbled in fixing small appliances—a hair drier for some salon de beauté, toasters, waffle irons, electric light fixtures. There were coils of scavenged copper wire, small bins of different-size fuses, porcelain wall-sockets, clamps, rolls of electrical tape—a second industry in used bits and pieces the Occupier had let his friends accumulate for him.
Wireless sets too, a few of those: console models and desktop ones. People were desperate for news. Though most didn’t possess such things, all wanted to listen—but watch out if you did to anything other than Radio-Paris, Radio-Vichy or Radio-Berlin. To do otherwise was to invite arrest.
Swich off, sure, but they’d check the position of the dial, and if it was where it shouldn’t have been, that was enough.
The fierce and dark blue eyes beneath the hank of jet black hair that hung over his brow were puffy with rage, tears and bitterness. The face was thin, the shoulders also, the arms long—a wasted man, a shell of his former self. Unshaven, pale and
shaking ever so slightly, he glared at her.
The work shirt was open at the collar and stained.
‘No one should come here because of my sister but now, suddenly, a visitor.’
He was dangerous, she told herself. One look at him had convinced her. ‘They brought you the Mark One I gave them. I only wanted to ask, How bad is it?’
So this was the courier who had come from Paris, this was the girl who had arrived on the very day Véronique had been assassinated. Just how the hell had she found the shop?
‘Those tubes are very fragile. You shouldn’t have been so careless. The crystals were also shattered. Without them and the tubes …’ He shrugged. He tried to find a cigarette and when he did so, she found the box of matches only to hear the acid of, ‘I’m not an invalid! Give me that. Lousy matches. Pétain’s state-run monopolies only lead to incompetence!’
The wood was too brittle, the heads snapped off so easily. Five times out of seven, the wretched matches wouldn’t strike a light.
The box was flung away. Retrieving it for him, he tried again and finally drew in on the cigarette as a man desperate for relief. ‘The tobacco is shit as well, but it’s the crystals I want to ask you about.’
‘The crystals …’ she managed. ‘What, please, are those?’
‘Thin slices cut from hexagonal crystals of the mineral quartz. Very delicate. Each thickness lets in or out only a very narrow band of short-wave signals. That Mark One of yours was equipped with three of them. One crystal for daytime transmissions at perhaps frequencies from 6,735 to 6,765 kilocycles per second, another for nighttime, perhaps at from 3,220 to 3,250 kilocycles, and a third for emergency use only.’
Why was she deliberately keeping her distance—afraid of him, was she? he wondered. ‘Here, let me show you.’
He removed a piece of veneer from the underside of the steel-topped bench and, reaching in and under, found what he was after. A matchbox.
Shaking the flat, clear, glasslike fragments out into a palm, he indicated she should come closer and when she held his hand to steady it, he looked at her defiantly and shrugged. ‘No morphia. No cognac, Calvados or eau-de-vie—there are too many alcohol-free days, eh? Therefore constant pain. The tobacco is so lousy and so scarce, one tries always but it is of little use.’
The Little Parachute Page 27