Just as well. She wasn’t happy with him knowing she’d be going as far as Rennes, even. Even if he’d been not ‘Hector’ but the Angel Gabriel she wouldn’t have been happy with it. As a matter of principle, as much as anything, there was no damn reason he or anyone else should know. In fact he probably was as sound as Hallowell said he was: but the allegations flying around head office were that the Gestapo knew all about him, who and what he was and his address in Paris – so how come he was still at large? – and also that amongst the many recent infiltrations of réseaux and arrests of agents, a significantly high proportion of those involved had flown into receptions which ‘Hector’ had organized. The implication was that they’d have been tailed to their ultimate destinations and used as stalking-horses to identify those with whom they then established contact.
It was possible, too. But as SOE’s Air Movements Officer, ‘Hector’ must have arranged the reception of perhaps three-quarters of all incoming agents, so a high proportion of those subsequently arrested would have passed through his hands; he couldn’t necessarily be held responsible for everything that happened to them afterwards. And another point in his favour was that he’d accepted the invitation to come back for de-briefing: it suggested a clear conscience. While in terms of her own present situation – this flight, and its reception having been set up by him – well, incoming agents had on some known occasions been met by reception committees of heavily-armed Germans. When there’d been treachery by an informer, or radio interception, or – the most common thing – the radio ostensibly operated by an SOE ‘pianist’ but actually by a Boche impersonating that pianist. The ‘radio game’ or funkspiel had been played all too often, and many deaths had resulted. But this time, she thought, she was probably as safe as houses. If ‘Hector’ had been turned and was working for the enemy, his motive in accepting Baker Street’s invitation would be to clear SOE minds of suspicion – so he could go back into the field and carry on – and/or to apprise himself of current operations or intentions. The last thing he’d want to do would be to foul his wicket tonight. For instance, she had an ‘arrived safely’ signal to transmit once she was clear and on her way; he’d know that, and he’d want her to send it.
* * *
The plane had its nose up, climbing. French coast ahead. Her own country: in a real sense, this was a home-coming. And she was Suzanne Tanguy, had been engaged to Daniel Miossec, and a young naval engineer of that name had been killed in a raid on Brest last year. Actually he’d been the fiancé of a daughter of a friend of Léonie de Mauvernay, who’d been an actress and was supposed to have been an even closer friend of Suzanne Tanguy’s late mother. That old friendship accounted well enough for her having had Suzanne to live with her in her elegant small house close to the Bois de Vincennes, in Paris, after Daniel’s death and her own nervous collapse, and then a few weeks ago writing to another, very special friend, Count Jules de Seyssons, telling him of Suzanne’s misfortune and unhappiness and wondering whether he could suggest any place and manner in which a young woman of her intelligence and nurse’s training might find employment in country air, peace and quiet. It had been an obvious hint that Count Jules might take her on, at his Manoir de Scrignac on the edge of the Montagnes d’Arrées, where he bred racehorses. He had an invalid wife, so it might have seemed an appropriate billet for Mlle Tanguy with her albeit somewhat limited nursing skills. As it had turned out, he’d seen no way of fitting her into his own establishment, but he’d gone out of his way to persuade his doctor, Henri Peucat at St Michel-du-Faou, that he needed a general assistant in his practice. Peucat, a widower in his sixties and single-handed in a practice covering a wide area, apparently hadn’t taken much persuading. The letters ‘Suzanne’ was carrying were one to Léonie de Mauvernay from the count, and one from Dr Peucat to herself, sent care of Mme de Mauvernay, offering her the job.
It had all been set up from scratch by Count Jules. The ball had started rolling when through a chain of Resistance contacts he’d got in touch with an SOE réseau in Nantes, whose organizer then met him somewhere or other where they’d discussed the possibility of having an ‘F’ Section agent assigned to his part of Finistère. The count had suggested that if the agent were female and could represent herself as having had medical or quasi-medical experience he’d provide her with a cover story that would be difficult to fault. After some hours of discussion, concentrating mainly on the objectives – and the count’s motives in putting such a plan forward in the first place – there’d been an exchange of signals with SOE in Baker Street, and a few days later they’d agreed to go along with it. Primarily because there was a good practical reason to – the need to have the Maquis armed, and quickly – but also because they had a suitable agent – Rosie – immediately available. There were complications within SOE involving Section ‘RF’ – which had been set up mainly to propitiate Charles de Gaulle in regard to British influence over French secret armies; ‘RF’ employed only French nationals as agents, and was supposed to have those western tracts of Brittany to itself. Objections must have been overcome; the count, éminence grise of local Resistance groups, therefore a key figure in de Gaulle’s efforts to coordinate nation-wide resistance under the banner of the newly created FFI – Forces Francaises de I’Interieure – wanted immediate action and was in a position to demand it. Then as soon as it was confirmed that an SOE girl agent was virtually ready for take-off he paid a business visit to Paris – racehorse business, which took him there quite frequently – visited Léonie de Mauvernay and dictated to her the letter she was to write to him, seeking a job in the country for her little protégée. It was she, Léonie de M., who had suggested the business of the fiancé who’d been killed in Brest, in fact borrowing the memory of the late Daniel Miossec from her friend’s daughter. A nice embellishment had been Baker Street’s idea of having a battered old lighter engraved with Miossec’s initials.
Detail was enormously important. And a tangible object such as the lighter could be worth hours of hard and skilful lying.
The opening paragraph of Rosie’s memorized orders read:
You will return to the field by Lysander from Tangmere to the vicinity of Soucelles in the Angers district, and will then go by train to Carhaix-Plouguer via Le Mans and Rennes. Rail tickets for those stages of your journey will be supplied to you by the returning agent ‘Hector’, who will also give you a consigne ticket to be exchanged at Le Mans for a parcel labelled MEDICAL EQUIPMENT – HANDLE WITH CARE, containing an ‘S’ phone for your own use.
Consigne was what in England would be known as the Left Luggage office. The parcel would have been left there by ‘Hector’, presumably. An ‘S’ phone was a type of radio-telephone enabling an operator on the ground to talk to a low-flying aircraft overhead; it had obvious uses in connection with para-drops. She guessed this one would originally have been destined for use in some other réseau, probably one of those recently blown and closed down.
Of which there’d been a frighteningly large number, of late. Infiltrations of réseaux by informers – including French Gestapo agents – and arrests, disappearances. ‘Hector’ came to mind again: that question-mark against his name. But discoveries of arms caches, too; this partly accounted for the current shortfall in weaponry available to the Resistance in Finistére, although another factor as far as the Maquis were concerned was the rapid increase in their own numbers: escapers from or evaders of forced labour in Germany, escaped POWs and hostages, Résistants on the rim – and so on. Recruits were flooding in, encouraged by Allied successes in Italy, Russian victories in the East and rumours of imminent invasion. But the Maquis weren’t much use sitting up there in the forests if they didn’t have weapons in their hands, and know how to use them.
Rosie didn’t like the Le Mans parcel business – having to show up and identify herself by producing the consigne receipt. She’d made the point at an earlier briefing session, but it had been set up by then and they hadn’t wanted to change it. Might not have b
een able to, at short notice. ‘Hector’ might not have been contactable by then. Why couldn’t he have left it at Rennes, she wondered?
Unless – seeing this suddenly – he wouldn’t be coming from the Rennes direction?
She’d taken it for granted that he would be, because of the ticket business; but some other agent might be coming from there – a courier of his, for instance – meeting him at Le Mans, where he himself might be getting off the Paris express. Paris was his base, after all. It made more sense: his colleague giving him the return halves of the Rennes–Le Mans tickets, and ‘Hector’ bringing the ‘S’ phone from Paris, depositing it in the consigne. He obviously wouldn’t want to take it all the way down to Tiercé.
The Lizzy had been flying straight and level for some time, she realized. France, down there. They’d have left Caen behind – off to the left. The pilot would be identifying rivers, lakes and forests: rivers and lakes silver, forests black. None of it would have meant anything to her even if she’d been able to look over – in the process getting her head blown off in the rush of bitingly cold air.
‘Hector’ might be OK, anyway.
Please God. As Air Movements Officer, with the detailed knowledge of réseaux and individual agents that he’d have amassed by this time – well, Hallowell must be absolutely certain that he was right, she thought. There’d be a hell of a lot at stake.
Next para then, as memorized:
At Rennes you will contact Elise Krilov (‘Giselle’) at or through the Café Trianon, deliver to her the parcel of 500,000 francs and request that she acknowledge receipt in her next transmission.
From Angers to Le Mans was about 95 kilometres, then to Rennes about 150. With two suitcases and the parcel, which she’d leave – parcel and one case – in the Rennes consigne. Better than hauling it all around the town, when there was every chance of being stopped and searched. The Café Trianon would doubtless be a cut-out, through which a message could be passed by telephone and ‘Giselle’ could then call back if she felt safe in doing so. All Rosie knew of her was that she was a courier and radio operator – as Rosie was too, in SOE and Resistance terminology a pianist – in a réseau rather macabrely code-named ‘Mortician’, operating south and southeast of Rennes, which was on the dividing line between ‘F’ Section’s territory and ‘RF’’s. The boundary ran north from Rennes to Mont St Michel on the coast.
The Lysander was losing height. Coming down to what the pilot had called treetop height, she supposed. Slightly above the treetops, one might hope…
Half an hour to go?
Visualizing the map, she guessed they’d pass about midway between Le Mans and Laval. The river Mayenne ran through Laval, and the Sarthe through Le Mans. Fifty kilometres apart, say. And halfway between them, flying south you’d be near enough on course for Angers, with the Soucelles field a dozen or fifteen miles on this northern side of it. And the Sarthe and the Mayenne converged there. She guessed that ‘Hector’ with his own flying experience might have picked a landing-ground in that locality primarily because incoming pilots would have the two rivers to lead them in.
Still losing height: and bumpily now, at that. Hadn’t done this for a while, but the air-sickness was quick to make itself felt again. Steeling herself: mind over matter… Those rivers would be the answer – together with the further point that if he overflew the Soucelles area he’d soon find himself over the Loire – which he’d have to be blind not to see, especially with this moon on it.
End of that diversionary thought. Try another: why would a man like ‘Hector’ turn traitor?
It wouldn’t be like breaking down under torture. She understood better than most how that could happen. How at a certain stage the pain took over – unless you were lucky enough to faint – to the extent that there was no thought left in your head other than to put an end to it by giving them whatever they wanted. But to go over to working for them was something else: you might agree to, in the course of being tortured, but then to go through with it, carry on doing it – that was very much something else.
Sending other agents to their deaths, for instance.
You’d use the cyanide, she thought. If you still had it and could get at it.
They usually offered money, to start with. And freedom, sometimes – or at least an ordinary prison instead of a concentration camp. In other words, a hope of staying alive. And of course cessation of pain and the fear of it, if there’d been torture. They also tried to convince you that you’d be joining the winning side. That was the motivation of many of the French who’d gone over to them.
She felt the plane tilt. Starboard wing lifting: altering course to the left. If he’d sighted the field, it had come sooner than she’d expected. Turning, banking with the port wing down, she was allowed a brief sight of moonlight reflected from some mirror-like surface – a lake, she guessed, or a widening of the river. Flooding, possibly. Gone now, lost, as the machine settled on this changed course: wings level, mercifully steady again, and the engine-note falling. Losing speed, that would mean, therefore height too, probably: she could feel it now, losing height quite fast. Could hardly have been at treetop level, after all… It would have been nice to have had some kind of intercom so the pilot could tell one what was happening, but these Special Duties Lysanders had no equipment that could be done without – no guns, armour or radio, for instance, all unnecessary weight removed in order to maximize speed and range.
Tilting left again. A long, seemingly endless turn.
Circling?
Could mean he’d spotted the field. Or he reckoned he was close to it, and searching. Normal procedure when they did find it was to fly over it once, see the recognition signal which one of the reception team would be flashing from the apex of a narrow triangle of lights, the up-wind end of the proposed landing run, and if it was the correct signal, circle and come in again.
Imagining the reception party down there – somewhere – hearing the engine-noise and watching the sky. Remembering that time when the pick-up had been for ‘Romeo’. There’d been a replacement for him coming in the same round-trip, so from the pilot’s point of view it would have been the same as this – one body in, one out.
The machine had steadied for about half a minute, was now circling left again. Beginning to look bad, she thought. Can’t find it: or the reception party’s run into trouble. Must think he’s over the landing-field or close to it: looking for a torch flashing the recognition letters at him. The letters that other time, she remembered, had been AK, and she’d done the flashing herself: the Résistant running the show had asked her to, since dotting and dashing was her special skill.
Christ. Still frigging around. Circling right-handed now; and the prospect in her mind of having to return to Tangmere. As much as was left of the night there in the Cottage, then a car back up to London – and hang around waiting for the next attempt.
Imagining the surprise in Ben’s voice when he heard hers, though, over the telephone. That would be the good bit. With the weekend on again. He’d have been coming up to London anyway on Friday, for some interview or other – some news he’d said he’d have for her…
The pilot had throttled back. So – forget all that, no return… Flaps down, she guessed: feeling the machine dropping under her, and the cutting of power, louder roar of wind. Bracing herself for impact: and her right hand groping for the pistol, to be sure she could get at it quickly if she needed. In fact there was very little impact: a bit of a thump, then a bounce and a longish-seeming interval before the second jolt and then the drumming of the wheels. A reddish light flashed by on the starboard side; there’d have been one this side as well. The pilot was braking, slewing off-track and correcting again, mud and stuff flying and the rush of night scenery slowing very suddenly, then the machine juddering and slithering to a halt. Moonlit pasture all around, with a blackness of trees beyond it. She ducked for the case she’d had her feet on: to be ready to pass one case down, if there was anyone to pass it to. Othe
rwise throw it – the one with only clothes in it. There was a figure down there now, though: and another trotting up behind him. She called in French – nothing but French from this point on – ‘Catch this?’ and tossed the case down. Looking beyond them and all around: still only these two. No – a third, coming more slowly. Bent, and hobbling. She’d taken her hand off the pistol, heard the pilot shout, ‘Out, please!’ He was leaning round and over from his cockpit. ‘Sorry took so long. Tell him he needs a new battery in his torch!’ She was climbing down the fixed ladder, one-handed because of this other, heavier case. Turning then, to face a shortish, muscular-looking character who already had the case she’d thrown to him and was reaching for this one too, but she hung on to it. A shout from the pilot then: ‘Passenger in quick, please!’
‘Hector?’
‘No.’ A gruff voice: farmer, she guessed. Shouting up at the pilot in countrified French, ‘No sight or sound. Better scram – eh?’
Rosie grasped a thick arm: ‘Hector not here?’
‘I said – no—’
‘Don’t know why or—’
‘Nothing!’
Stubbled face by moonlight, wool hat pulled low enough to cover the tops of his ears: from the tone of voice one imagined his expression as indignant, as if he felt she was blaming him for ‘Hector’’s absence. She turned back to the Lizzy, called up, ‘No return passenger – hasn’t shown up!’
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