They’d passed the grim-looking so-called hotel.
‘Where does this lane go to?’
‘Timber-yard. And here’s our church. Right there, however—’
‘Yes.’ Across the road, the entrance to what Dufay had referred to as the village’s beating heart. Big timber gates, really massive, with the personnel-access door set in one of them.
‘When the trucks come, is there room in there for them?’
‘Drive one in and load it – or unload, when it’s a delivery of steel plate for instance – and if there are others they park in the market square, wait their turn. Then the first one out – drive in, back out – and the next one in… Justine, I was thinking – if you wanted a watch kept for a convoy arriving at night – there’d be an excellent view from the Poste, and boys have got in there – playing games, showing off to each other, I suppose. They can get in at the back – so my daughters have said… But see the lane there? It’s a cul-de-sac; the wall’s the boundary of Marchéval’s, and those are more workers’ houses.’
Click-clacking on, on their wooden shoes. Graveyard up behind them on their left, where the ground sloped up to surround the church. It wasn’t an old church. Colette pointed ahead: ‘These were farm-workers’ cottages originally, when the factory was a farm. All the other housing’s of more recent origin. Those in the cul-de-sac were built in Monsieur Henri’s time for instance, not his father’s. This end one though – here, the old farm cottages – that’s our gendarmerie now. We have a sergeant and one gendarme. Boches use it too – at least the lieutenant, Klebermann, spends time there – signing permits and so forth. Major Linscheidt seems to leave it all to him – doesn’t as far as anyone can see have anything to do himself. But while we’re here, why don’t we call in there, register your arrival?’
‘Uh-huh. Don’t have my papers with me.’
‘But you should have, Justine!’
‘I suppose. Anyway – later on, or tomorrow… What’s this now?’
A staff car, camouflage-painted, stopping at the gendarmerie: soldier-driver jumping out… She did have her papers, but still didn’t trust them. In particular the feuille semestrielle – a document issued twice a year, entitling its holder to renew the various categories of ration card – was a bit of a botched-up job. At a glance, quick check at a roadblock, it might get by, but detailed examination at leisure in an office – no. If she could avoid the registration procedure altogether, she would. At least delay it as long as possible… The driver had pulled a rear door open for a young Boche officer to alight. Fifteen or twenty metres ahead of them. Colette said quietly, ‘Lieutenant Klebermann.’
Bat-ears under the tall peaked cap: long legs in shiny boots, striding into the gendarmerie. Rosie tugged at Colette’s arm: ‘Since I don’t have papers with me and he might only be in there a minute – might cross, go back on the other side?’
‘All right.’
The soldier was back in the car, waiting. Starting over, Rosie pointed to a house directly across from the gendarmerie; she’d noticed it in its large garden when she’d passed here in the gazo with Guillaume.
‘Who lives there?’
‘Our curé – Father Patrice. Big enough place, for a man living alone?’
‘He was leaving the auberge when we arrived, yesterday. What are his – er – politics?’
‘Well – he’s sheltered Maquisards who were sick – and had Doctor Simonot visit them there in that house. And he’s been into the forest to say Mass for them – many times. Sometimes Jacques has taken him.’
‘And the doctor?’
‘Very much one of us.’
‘Would other villagers be aware of it?’
A shrug… ‘He wouldn’t broadcast it. But – it might become known. The fact most of them are – passive, one might say – doesn’t make them pro-Boches, or informers.’
‘Do the Boches appear in church at all?’
‘There was one who did. Happens that none of them at the manor now are Catholic. In any case they’d go into Sens on a Sunday – all that parading, beating drums?’
‘So you don’t see much of them. Although Monsieur Henri must?’
They’d crossed over, and turned back. Factory gates coming up on their left. Machinery noise from inside, smoke rising vertically from the tall chimney. There was no wind at all, now; in Thérèse’s jacket, Rosie was feeling the day’s increasing warmth. Colette telling her, ‘He says – Monsieur Henri, I mean – that the one in charge, Major Linscheidt, isn’t at all bad. A plain soldier, he calls himself – only one eye, and he’s lame, but he takes a gun out sometimes, for pigeons and rabbits, and on occasion he’s given some to Monsieur Henri. I don’t know much about Klebermann. Wachtel – the engineer – is fairly poisonous, one hears.’
Rosie said, ‘Granted that some may be less poisonous than others. I don’t think I’d differentiate much between them.’ She touched Colette’s arm: ‘Could we turn down here?’
Down the west side of the market square. The school, she saw, had a playground immediately behind it, then the playing-field with its goal-posts. Low wall along that side, Marchéval’s high one on their left. A side-door, she saw, in the factory wall: it was shown on Dufay’s sketch. And on this side at the bottom end of the concreted play area, a timber shed – pavilion, it turned out when they were closer to it, with a veranda facing the field.
Set fire to that, on ‘Jupiter’ night? It was ideally located, and easily accessible over this waist-high wall. A bottle of petrol and a match was all you’d need. All someone would need… Colette was saying, ‘At the bottom here there’s a bridge over the stream – the track goes on past farm buildings you can see from your bedroom window. But there’s a path along the stream too, and a good view of the manor from just along there. No trees or wall this side of it, just garden, Monsieur Henri’s father wanted the view south to the hills and woods. I don’t want to be all day, but—’
‘I’d very much like to see it…’
Chapter 13
‘We go left here.’
Woods thickening around them. Leaving St Valéry Jacques had proposed, ‘Thought we might go by way of Chigy, to woods on high ground between les Clérimois and Fontaine-la-Gaillarde. Unless you’ve any better idea?’
‘None at all. But how far’d that be?’
‘Only seven or eight kilometres. Near a guy I collect stuff from, though: and if you were based in Sens, even, you might choose that area. No reason the detectors should think of St Valéry or Marchéval’s.’
‘Sounds good, then.’
Chigy was only a few minutes from St Valéry, and still on that side of the Vanne. A small bridge, narrower and planked, not paved, carried the road across the river; Jacques slowing again then to bump over the railway line, which must have crossed the main road between the St Valéry turn-off and this one. Rosie saw what looked like a station building – a halt, at least – half hidden in trees to their left.
‘Could the tubes not be sent east by rail?’
‘Marchéval’s did use the railway, before. But as you’ll have noticed it’s single-track – and they’re short of rolling-stock, the line’s been bombed or blown up several times – not here, but on the Paris side of Sens – and near Troyes, come to think of it… Each time, no trains then for days… And you see, on a line like that – well, a truck can get off the road, but a train can’t get off its tracks – huh?’
‘In any case that bridge isn’t up to much, is it?’
‘Ours at St Valéry is the only one that is. Even at that they were talking about replacing it. As I told you. The only alternative’s hardly practical – a long way round with some very tight bends in narrow roads – especially right in the villages.’
‘So if the St Valéry bridge was blown up—’
‘Don’t suggest it, please!’
A sideways glance, showing the whites of his eyes. There was a heavy growth of stubble on his cheeks by this time. Eyes front again: they were on the
so-called ‘main’ road now but he was slowing again, preparing to turn off to the left. Adding, ‘In any case they’d soon put another one across – the steel thing they had in mind before. You wouldn’t isolate Marchéval’s for long.’
‘For a while, though. If one needed to. To hold the trucks up for a day, even – if an air attack was coming in?’
‘I thought bombing was what you were talking about – smashing the bridge as well as…’ Turning: and the side road looping back immediately in a sharp left-hand bend, to cross yet another small bridge. Not the Vanne, though – unless it had split into two streams, one each side of the road… Jacques finished: ‘– the bridge as well as the factory.’
‘I was thinking of PE. Plastic explosive. Which the Maquis must have – by way of the parachutages you’ve helped with?’
‘Have, I’m sure. When the whistle blows they’ll be using it. Railway lines, primarily.’ Another glance at her: ‘You handy with explosives?’
‘Oh, yes. Comes into our training.’
A grunt. ‘Just don’t practise on our bridge, eh?’
‘You have strong feelings for that bridge.’
‘I’m a fisherman. You’ll be getting fish for your supper this evening that came from the Vanne. One of the best pools is close by there – where the river divides around a small island.’
‘I saw it. Guillaume said he thought there’d be trout.’
‘Guillaume?’
‘The man who brought me here. He’s a fisherman.’
‘And a chef de réseau, he said. Had eyes for you, huh?’
‘Oh, nonsense…’
‘It was plain enough to me – and to Colette. Reminded me of the way André Marchéval used to watch her all the time.’
‘Colette?’
‘Despite her being ten years older than he is. Or was. But that’s André for you. Joseph Lambert really had it in for him, I can tell you. Well, Joe’s wife’s a stunner – or she was. Huguette. He told me she was spending more time than was justified in Paris and he was certain it was André she was seeing. Her parents live there and her father had had a stroke, it gave her good reason to visit them. Supposedly visit them. Joe felt sort of helpless – he was still crazy about her.’
‘Did Colette know?’
‘Uh-huh. Reckons young André’s the bee’s knees. Not that she’d have—’
‘I’m sure—’
‘I know it. Shouldn’t be gabbing like this, should I. Don’t mention it to her – please? Joe spoke to me in confidence – desperation, you might say. Oh, he was explaining why he’d brought her with him that time. Yes, that was it.’ Nodding… ‘Shouldn’t talk about it. For all we know they could both be dead, poor sods – she wasn’t exactly isolated from Joe’s work, they’d have hauled ’em both in, wouldn’t they. Bloody tragic… Got a cigarette, have you?’
‘Of course…’
‘Another kilometre or so, we’ll be in les Clérimois. Turn left there. What are you telling them in London – if I’m allowed to know?’
‘Telling them that in my judgement the Marchéval products are V2 rocket-casings, and giving them your figure of a hundred and seventy centimetres diameter.’
‘Just less than—’
‘Yes. And that we could evacuate the village before an attack. And – finished casings, a dozen or more, awaiting transport. Also – although they may know it already – about Dufay being arrested.’ She paused: match flaring. ‘Here.’
One ready-lit Gauloise… Jacques took it delicately in blunt, calloused fingers. ‘Thanks.’ Placing it between his lips: eyes on the road, both hands back like clamps on the juddering wheel. It wasn’t a good surface – dirt and gravel, pot-holed and ridged. Rosie with her head back, inhaling the pungent smoke and remembering Bob Hallowell telling her in the SOE flat in Portman Square, back in April, Happen to know the motive’s nothing more than sexual jealousy. A Frenchman ‘Hector’ himself recruited and whose girlfriend recently transferred her affections – to ‘Hector’, d’you see…
For ‘girlfriend’ read ‘wife’? Otherwise like all professional liars sticking as near as possible to the truth?
She asked Jacques, ‘Do you know, was Lambert recruited by André Marchéval?’
Whites of eyes again… ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Could have been some other agent, some other girl. Jacques’ reminiscence had rung that bell, but it didn’t have to dovetail so neatly. Hallowell again: Always did have a bit of a roving eye. Doesn’t make him a traitor, does it?
Made him a shit as well as a traitor, Rosie thought. Visualizing him as she’d seen him first in Morlaix and then in Paris: average height – five-ten or eleven, maybe – slim, dark, she’d guessed between twenty-five and thirty. Swarthy complexion, smarmy smile, a way of crinkling his eyes. And a voice that had sounded artificially deep – as if he worked at it, the way he liked to sound: that was the impression she’d had.
Lambert reporting on ‘Hector’ to Baker Street, maybe, ‘Hector’ then shopping Lambert to his Boche friends? Which might have involved shopping the pretty wife as well?
‘This les Clérimois we’re coming to?’
A nod. Wet-looking Gauloise clinging to his lower lip. ‘We go left – on a smaller road, believe it or not. Listen – if we should be stopped – unlikely, but could happen – well, everyone for miles around knows who I am and what I do – you’re just along for the ride – OK?’
She shrugged, glancing away. ‘Heard that before…’
* * *
A kilometre or two westward from les Clérimois there was a wide area where loggers had been at work, thousands of tree-stumps and the litter which accompanies tree-felling giving an impression of general devastation. Jacques said, ‘They moved from here a month ago. Started on the other side now. Give it a few years – well, twenty or thirty, say – Christ knows what this place’ll look like.’
‘Beautiful rolling farmland, maybe.’
‘Whether the idea’s to re-plant, or to grub out the stumps… Could make farmland eventually, I dare say.’ Nodding ahead, pointing: ‘I’ll be turning up the far side of this lot, OK?’
‘Anywhere you say.’
‘Sort of place a couple with necking in mind might pick on, eh?’
‘Or with charcoal-collecting in mind.’
‘That track you can see now… Yes, sure – charcoal-collection as cover to our real purpose, is the idea they should get if we ran into a patrol, I’m saying.’ Shake of the dark head: ‘Not likely we’d run into any, mind you. Week by week lately they’ve been fewer and further between. I’d guess they’re scraping the barrel for men they can put in the firing-line. Here we go. Up there, I’ll turn into the trees.’
It wasn’t a steep slope, more like one of a succession of wooded undulations. Just as well, considering the smoothness of the pick-up’s tyres, which she’d noticed in the yard at the auberge. Battered old wagon, by the look of it converted to pick-up from an ordinary saloon, also converted to gazogène, with its burner and chimney right behind the cab. Lurching and crashing over ruts as he swung off into a thinnish copse of beechwood.
‘Mind opening the bonnet so I can clip my transceiver lead to your battery?’
‘Sure.’
The transceiver in its fitted suitcase was under her seat. This would be an emergency procedure transmission, i.e. calling the Sevenoaks station and getting a go-ahead from them before passing her message – which she’d coded up in her bedroom earlier in the afternoon. Also at that time she’d found a good hiding-place for the one-time pad and other items including the Beretta. The Llama and its spare clips were with the ‘S’ phone, in that carton, but this indoors cache was in the boxroom, an old trunk containing amongst other things a wedding-dress that reeked of camphor, and a lace-up corset; the coding materials, cash and the pistol had gone under those, nestling among God knew what – bloomers, maybe. Now she’d got the transceiver out of the car, and by that time Jacques had opened the bonnet; she gave him the busine
ss-end of the power lead, spring-clips for attachment to battery terminals, put the case on the ground on the blind side of the gazo from the road – or rather track – and then walked away into the trees paying-out the aerial wire in a more or less straight line. Twenty metres of the very fine, dark-coloured wire: over lower branches where there were any, looping it around trunks when there were not.
Back to the gazo then. Jacques was leaning against it, stuffing a pipe and keeping an eye on the road and surroundings generally. Rosie sat on the ground and pulled the set on to her lap. Switch on: a glimmer of red light and a quiver of the needle in the ammeter. When she began to transmit she’d adjust the output to forty or forty-five milliamperes. She’d inserted the appropriate quartz crystal – the ‘emergency procedure’ one – before starting out: that crystal pre-set the wavelength, made it distinctively hers – ‘Masha’’s – which would be picked up and trigger immediate response from ‘her’ operator in North Kent – touch wood. Key, now: she plugged it in: and the headset. The key itself, capped with black plastic, had a pleasantly familiar feel between two fingertips and the thumb. Now the message in its five-letter groups – from an inside pocket in Thérèse’s jacket, smoothing it out left-handed on her knee. OK. Switch to ‘Send’: headphones over her ears… Starting then, tapping out ‘QTC 1’ – meaning, I have a message for you. Then ‘QRK, interrogative’ – Is this reaching you intelligibly? And ‘K’ – Over.
Switch to ‘Receive’, and wait…
Two seconds: three… A thin squeaking in her ears then: she was turning it up, Sevenoaks stuttering ‘QRK… QRV…’ Intelligible… Ready to receive. Over.’
Magnifique… Except they’d be alert in the Boche radio-detection centre in Paris too: lights glowing, tapes running, direction-finders seeking jerkily this way, that way… With the switch at ‘Send’ she opened with Marilyn’s stipulated self-identification Masha on line, followed by a group indicating that no reply was expected: otherwise with emergency procedure there’d be the seventy-minute deadline, Baker Street frenetic. Whereas in quite a bit less than seventy minutes she and Jacques would be back in the auberge – she hoped. Eyes on the message, the rows of capitals with Masha’s personal security check included in the form of a corrupt (misspelt) seventh word. There was a ‘bluff’ check too, which didn’t add up to much and could legitimately be revealed under torture.
In at the Kill Page 29