Single to Paris

by Single to Paris (retail) (epub)

  That was the point, really. She had the personal contact, and there was no one else who did. Which of course was why they were lumping her with it in the first place. If she’d ducked out they wouldn’t have known what the hell to do, and you could have written those two off, they’d have had no chance at all. Didn’t have much this way. And while in the briefing-officers’ minds there were valid and urgent military reasons for wanting them out double-quick, before Gestapo torture broke either of them, in Rosie’s own private mind there was a strong personal motivation – a desperation to find them and get them out before the bastards began using their whips or pliers on them.

  Having been there oneself. Knowing how it was, or could be, and to a large extent identifying with them – with Léonie in particular, of course – and remembering all too well that if that session in Rouen a year ago had lasted another half-minute she’d have told them everything and anything they’d wanted to know.

  Chapter 2

  Arrival at Tempsford hadn’t been all that joyous. She’d allowed herself daydreams of Marilyn being there, even bringing Ben out with her. Marilyn Stuart, 2nd Officer in the Wrens – tall, blonde and as slim as a mannequin, but much more importantly a tremendously good friend – had been Rosie’s Conducting Officer, i.e. sort of mentor-companion, during the months of SOE training, had seen her off on each of her deployments and had usually been there to welcome her back; in the course of this last one she’d even flown out as Baker Street’s special courier for a late night/early morning clandestine conference in a wood near St Mihiel. Which in fact was where they’d last seen each other: so that her not being there on the ground at Tempsford when the Hudson had put itself down in the pre-dawn glow on Monday had been… disconcerting.

  Because she’d always been there when needed. And this was a lonely business. Very much alone in the field, you looked forward intensely to reunion with your friends.

  The man who had met her, introducing himself as David Hyatt – a major – and sending Brierly and an orderly ahead to the car burdened with Rosie’s gear – suitcase, transceiver and an ‘S’-phone – asked, ‘Did he mention what we’ve got lined up for you?’

  By ‘he’ he’d meant Brierly, presumably. It was a dawn full of strangers as well as disappointments. Rosie had asked him, ‘Are you from Baker Street?’

  Baker Street being the location of SOE’s ‘F’ Section – ‘F’ for France. Hyatt had told her, ‘No. The other lot. St James’s.’ Meaning not SOE but SIS. Secret Intelligence Service, and adding, ‘We’re in partnership on this one. Did he tell you?’

  ‘A suggestion that I should go straight back into the field, you mean?’

  ‘Rather more than a suggestion, actually.’

  ‘Only if I accept it. Do you know how long I’ve been in the damn field?’

  ‘Yes. As it happens. We’re well aware of the grisly time you’ve had, too. Left for dead at one stage. Baker Street only very recently discovering you weren’t dead, they’d even put you in for a posthumous G.C. – which won’t now be posthumous, of course – and three cheers for that… The story as I’ve heard it is – heck, flabbergasting. So – yes. I take your point. Only we hope that in all the circumstances…’ A hand on her arm: ‘Exhausted?’

  ‘Slightly.’ Depressed, too – somewhat. ‘Are we going to Gaynes Hall?’

  ‘No – Fawley Court.’

  ‘Do you know Marilyn Stuart?’

  ‘Yes. Not well, but—’

  ‘I’d thought she’d be here to meet me.’

  ‘Involved elsewhere, I was told, circumstances beyond her control, but she was supposed to be getting back tonight – last night – and she’ll be joining us at Fawley. Rotten for you, I’m sorry. Anyway you’re entitled to a good long sleep – meal, hot bath…’

  ‘When does the de-briefing start?’

  ‘Re-briefing, more than de-briefing. Well… soon as you’re rested, fed and fit. Here we are now.’

  Brierly drove the car, a black Humber, and Hyatt sat in the back with her. Rosie asked him as they got going, ‘One more question – please?’

  ‘Many as you like.’

  ‘In respect of Guillaume Rouquet and Léonie Garnier – why me? What can I do that anyone else can’t?’

  ‘Ah. Well. You’ll recall doing a job for us – for SIS, that is – a year ago. You did it in parallel with your SOE activities – in Rouen?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You made contact with a woman by name of Jacqueline Clermont, and in her company you also met a German, member of the SD who was calling himself a sergeant – name of Gerhardt Clausen?’

  ‘Jacqueline’s boyfriend.’

  ‘One of her boyfriends. You may remember he went around in civvies. It was fairly obvious he was only passing himself off as a sergeant. For whatever reason…’

  ‘Didn’t they all wear civvies – SD and Gestapo – until the landings in Normandy?’

  ‘In Paris I believe they did, yes. Didn’t all call themselves sergeants though, did they? And it’s fairly obvious he’s nothing of the kind. Good-looking chap, eh?’

  ‘Jacqueline was certainly keen.’

  ‘Although he’d introduced her – handed her on, you might say – to a colonel of engineers, Hans Walther, then top dog in the construction of rocket-launching sites. She spent weekends with him in Amiens, didn’t she? Which is why we asked you to recruit her as an informant.’

  ‘Has she stuck to the deal we made?’

  ‘Walther was replaced – recalled to Germany months ago. Unfortunately. Fortunately for Clausen though, who’s had her to himself again.’

  ‘So the deal I made with her went phut.’

  ‘Well – yes, but while it lasted, Rosie—’

  ‘The evening I met Clausen – very briefly, thank God – he was on his way back to Germany. To Berlin. He’d been away somewhere, come back to Rouen to pack up and say goodbye. Jacqui was going strong with Walther then, but it was obvious Clausen was planning to spend those last nights with her – a Thursday and Friday, I think it was – and she wasn’t by any means averse to it. My presence in her flat that evening choked him off, rather. Which might have saved my bacon – I mean, his mind wasn’t on anything but Jacqui, he didn’t question her account of me.’

  ‘And she’s back with him now. He’s in Paris – wielding considerable authority.’

  ‘She in Paris with him?’

  ‘Some of the time. Still has the hairdressing business in Rouen, I gather. In Paris rather as she was with Walther in Amiens, one supposes. But – sticking to the point, your question – the Gestapo’s been pulling out of Rue des Saussaies, and the SD out of Avenue Foch, and Boemelbourg himself – know who he is, do you?’

  ‘Elderly homosexual, second-in-command at Rue des Saussaies.’

  ‘Yes. More precisely, head of SD Counter-Espionage Section IV. In which capacity he’s left Clausen a free hand with Courtland and di Mellili. So—’

  Rosie cut in: ‘Mind if we stick to calling them Rouquet and Garnier?’

  ‘I don’t mind, no, but—’

  ‘If I’m to be sent back into France – those are the names they’re using—’

  ‘Yes. Point taken. But regarding Clausen, what I was about to say – he can play it any way he likes – have them shot, ship them east—’

  ‘Wouldn’t get much out of them then.’

  ‘No. And his brief would be simply to get results – by whatever means… That old pansy must have a good opinion of him, obviously. The other prisoners we knew of have already been cleared away to the camps, poor devils – Germans don’t want walking, talking evidence left for us to find – but those two—’

  ‘They can’t have had them more than a week.’

  ‘Less. Just days. Our information’s extremely fresh. Which does give us some chance – we hope—’

  ‘Information from what source?’

  ‘Might we leave that sort of detail to later, when we get down to the nuts and bolts? The answer may well
surprise you – but if we keep shooting off at tangents—’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Thing is, Clausen must be pretty well on his own. For instance, Rue des Saussaies is guarded by Milice now. Although Oberg – General Carl Oberg – heard of him?’

  She hadn’t. And her head was fairly splitting. Hyatt telling her, ‘Head of Gestapo for all France. He’s still in Paris, or was a day or two ago. So was Helmut Knocken, Standartenführer – Boemelbourg’s superior, technically. You see, we’re off on yet another tangent – and you are whacked, aren’t you…’

  She’d got the general feel of it, though: why they were roping her in, or hoping to – the possibility of re-establishing contact with Jacqueline, and through her getting to – or at – Gerhardt Clausen.

  But then what?

  End up sharing a cell with Léonie? Hearing the guards coming, the crash of their boots and clink of keys, she and Léonie both hoping to Christ it wasn’t her that was going to be dragged out this time?

  She’d been there. In the Gestapo prison at Fresnes for instance. Didn’t need to exert any powers of imagination to know how it was, or could be again.

  Didn’t have to take it on, either. While the car wound its way through the quiet English countryside to Fawley Court she was beginning to think she wouldn’t. She was exhausted, and dispirited – by Marilyn’s absence, let alone by the collapse of what had perhaps been extravagant hopes of Ben being here too. Although she could still see the crazy image as she’d daydreamed it, the moment of reunion – herself clambering out of the aircraft and Ben loping towards her across the airfield – bawling her name, arms spread to grab her, snatch her up…

  She’d slept, woken as the car crunched over gravel in the forecourt. New faces then in the growing daylight, quiet voices – mainly women’s, those of FANYs who staffed this place. Hyatt’s quiet, ‘Get her to bed. She’s out on her feet.’ Bed like an enveloping cloud in which she’d dreamed again of Ben, but not happily at all; he had the Stack woman with him – Lady Stack, former wife of a former motor gunboat CO of his, and before that his own (Ben’s) mistress. An English Jacqueline? But she’d quite liked Jacqueline: and loathed la Stack… There was a degree of confusion in it. But Marilyn had let her know – certainly implied – that in the interval when they’d all thought she (Rosie) was dead, Ben had resumed – what was the phrase – ‘keeping company’ with that bitch. All right, if one had been dead, what the hell, who’d care? It was only rather sickening that he’d have been so ready to accept the notion that they’d killed her – and so damn quick to—

  But la Stack would have been pursuing him.

  Hyatt had said something about waking her at noon so she could get a bath before lunch, after which they’d start the briefing, but in the event Marilyn had arrived in mid-forenoon, taken charge and let her sleep until about 1 pm. The two of them had lunched on their own then, and she’d told Rosie that Ben was in Norway or on his way there, in a motor gunboat on some urgent mission. Norway being still thick with Nazis, of course.

  But why should this be so – when surely he was in that job in London still? He’d twice been wounded in MGB actions on the French coast, was supposed to be unfit for sea duty, and they’d put him back in his old job in St James’s, the one he’d had when she’d first met him.

  ‘Isn’t he still walking with a stick?’

  (So would not have come bounding across the airfield like some great kangaroo…)

  ‘Yes, he is. Or was a fortnight ago. I gather this is a special operation, mounted in a hurry; they’re short-handed at the moment, and by all accounts he’s a very competent navigator – which they needed. Anyway, you know how he is, your Ben…’

  ‘Straining at the leash. Speaking of which, what about Joan Stack?’

  ‘Rosie, I honestly don’t know. Nor does anyone else. We have had… well, spotters out for her.’

  ‘He still doesn’t know I’m alive, then?’

  ‘I don’t think he can. To start with he was out of town – had a few days’ leave, we heard—’

  ‘With la Stack?’

  ‘No reason to assume so.’

  ‘But plenty of reason to guess?’

  ‘Rosie – when he gets back from Norway—’

  ‘If that’s where he really is.’

  ‘It is, I promise you. I’ve spoken to his boss. Believe me, Rosie darling—’

  ‘Believe you all right—’

  ‘And if I could have been here earlier—’

  ‘I know. I know…’

  ‘The thing to remember at this meeting now, Rosie, is that if you don’t want to go back in, you damn well don’t have to. I’ll back you to the hilt, I won’t let them persuade you against your will. Nobody’d blame you for a moment for turning it down. Come on, let’s get some food in us.’

  * * *

  Head down, pedalling doggedly, and the bomb-shattered southern outskirts of Rouen closing in around her. Traffic not thick at all, mostly bicycles and a few gazos. Nothing German, as far as she’d seen yet. They’d always been thicker on the right bank than the left, of course. She was on Rue d’Elboeuf now, with Sotteville les-Rouen off to the right somewhere and Rouen-St Sever ahead. She’d recognise the corner when she came to it – if it was still there. There’d been a lot of bombing. This was the industrial side, presumably the main target area.

  If she got to the church – St Sever – she’d know she’d come too far, missed the turn.

  But she hadn’t. There… Corner house intact, although its neighbour was a heap of rubble. Old-looking rubble, weeds growing all over it. Then the café she’d used once or twice: Café Saint Sever, they’d been lucky too. Now the next right, then left: spotting it and free-wheeling across the road to it, bumping up on to the pavement. It was a narrow-fronted, three-storied house which a century or so ago had been one half of a convent. Occupied more by tarts now than novices. She hung on to the bike while leaning to press the bell: bikes being valuable items in France, costing as much as cars had before the war and tending to get stolen.

  Door opening: Ursule herself, in a skirt and striped shirt. A smell of onions. Rosie smiled up at her: ‘Ursule.’

  ‘It’s – Jeanne-Marie?’

  ‘Well done. And you’re looking marvellous!’

  ‘Don’t look too bad yourself. But you left in the devil of a rush, didn’t you?’

  She nodded. ‘Without saying goodbye. Sorry. Force majeure.’

  ‘Force Boche…’

  ‘Quite. I left the rent money though.’

  ‘Of course you did. And you want a room now – that it?’

  ‘For one night – probably.’

  ‘One night or longer, suit yourself. Same room, same rent. Bring the machine inside. Come far?’

  ‘Far enough that my legs are dropping off.’

  ‘Well. Top floor again, I’m afraid—’

  ‘I’ll manage…’

  * * *

  Alone, she sat on the iron-framed bed and ate the bread and cheese while massaging her calves. Recalling Hyatt’s comment, ‘Adding at least a hundred kilometres to the journey, that way. Worst thing’s the delay – you’d need a night in Rouen, day two getting into Paris—’

  ‘Maybe more than one night. Depends on whether Jacqui’s there or not.’

  ‘And there you are. If she isn’t, could be a fatal waste of time.’ Frank Willoughby – balding, twitchy, SOE staff, a colleague of Marilyn’s – shaking his head decisively. Decisively as he saw it… Rosie said to Marilyn, ‘Via Rouen is the only way I’d consider going. Arriving blind in Paris, relying on luck and some unknown résistant—’

  ‘Dénault’s as good a contact as you could have. Gaullist FFI – one of their most effective ones – with chaps he can call on all over Paris.’ Willoughby assured her, ‘He’ll have Clausen tracked down for you in no time at all!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well – for instance – pick him up outside Rue des Saussaies or Avenue Foch, wherever the action is,
and trail him to where he’s living. Correction – where they are living. Then you either drop in on Jacqueline when he’s out, or with our friends’ help watch the place until she shows up. Or if he’s around too much and she goes out on her own… huh?’ He’d glanced at Hyatt as if inviting congratulations; added, ‘She could be up and running within hours.’

  ‘If it’s as easy as that, why haven’t you put this genius on to it already? Why bring me into it at all?’

  ‘Rosie.’ Hyatt, blunt-featured but patient. ‘It’s only forty-eight hours since we had the tip-off about these two. And you are the obvious person to make contact, so it had to be discussed with you – as we’re doing now. Wait a minute – there’s more. Getting on to this chap any sooner would have meant going off at half-cock: that’s one thing; another is that with so many réseaux blown now, radio links aren’t… well, aren’t exactly guaranteed secure. Whereas your contact with him would be personal, face to face and a password, no possibility of interception. It’s a very sensitive issue, this, you realise. Another directly related point is that having located Rouquet and the girl, this same chap is the one you’ll be relying on for – well, for whatever can be done about it. Depending on where they are and how heavily guarded.’

  ‘And the general state of affairs in Paris by that time.’ Willoughby cutting in again. ‘It’s already chaotic. The only trains running in and out of any of the stations are troop trains – no food getting in, and no fuel – so electric power at best only a few hours a day; communist elements of the Resistance pressing for a rising now – to forestall the Gaullists of course—’

  Rosie asked Hyatt, ‘What’s the military situation? When are we or the Americans likely to get there?’

  ‘Not as soon as you might expect. Eisenhower’s bypassing Paris, to the north and south. Here, I’ll show you.’ A map – one of several on the table – which he unfolded. Leaning over from behind her and Marilyn, but pausing then: ‘Re strategy, have you heard of the landings this morning in the South of France, on the coast between Nice and Marseille?’