* * *
She was leaning against the pick-up, had just lit a cigarette. Guichard, Jacques and André prowling around the clearing. Guichard between the other two and talking volubly – about his plans for taking over St Valéry, she’d gathered, how jumping the gun with a sabotage operation possibly resulting in reprisals might affect it, et cetera.
André was leaving them, though: coming over here. Watching him come, she was conscious of the weight of the pistol dragging on that side of her jacket. Putting a hand down to swing it back behind her hip: fishing out the crumpled Gauloise pack then, offering him one as he stopped in front of her.
He shook his head. ‘Thanks, no.’
‘Don’t smoke at all?’
‘Used to. In Gestapo custody I got used to doing without. Want to talk about all that now?’
‘If you like.’ Taking a long drag: needing it. ‘I think you can guess what I have to say. In a nutshell, that in Morlaix – and Paris even more so – you weren’t a fellow prisoner, you were working for the Gestapo.’
‘No – I was not. I was – having to let them think I was. It doesn’t surprise me you’d have jumped to that same conclusion, but – truly, it’s not so. May I ask why you didn’t accuse me in the others’ hearing?’
‘Because I’m here with a job to do and I don’t want complications. Secondly, I’d have to prove it – and these people know you, don’t know me. They accept you’re playing straight, and obviously they need you in on this job. I’d like to sort the rest of it out with you, certainly, but—’
‘May I explain – just between ourselves – some background to it?’
She shrugged, exhaling. Trainel had just dumped a sack of charcoal in the pick-up and shambled off without even glancing at them. André told her, ‘I had no option but to pretend to play their game. To start with they’d arrested my sister – she’d been helping in an escape line, and to my huge regret – in fact shame – she was doing something to help me out when they caught her. My father doesn’t know this, and I daren’t tell him… Anyway – subsequently they promised me she’d be held in an ordinary prison, nothing worse, as long as I – yes, collaborated. Because in my job with SOE they assumed I’d have direct contacts with réseaux all over France. But listen – this is where it becomes a little complicated – almost right up to the time of my arrest I didn’t think they knew I had anything to do with SOE. I truly and absolutely did not. Whereas in fact they were on to me – I still don’t know exactly how, where or when—’
‘So it was solely because of the threat to your sister—’
‘Almost because of that alone. But the business of SOE – which of course is all that concerns you – so happened I never did have all that many contacts in the field. I did have frequent communication with Baker Street, of course – using pianists of several réseaux around the Paris area – whom I may say I was later able to warn, enabling them to disappear – at least I hope—’
‘And names and addresses of résistants handling arrivals and departures on the various fields?’
‘Oh, yes.’ A grimace… ‘And before my arrest – as I’d only just begun to realize – with utter horror, I may say – at that time – most of the time I was being tailed – and so would – well, quite a number of agents, from the point of arrival onward. They’d have been followed to their réseaux. It’s a terrible thing to know, let alone admit – believe me I’m not saying it lightly. I have to face up to it, that’s all – my fault, my colossal – well, stupidity—’
‘Looking like – something much worse?’
He looked away across the clearing, to where Guichard and Jacques were still in conversation. Shaking his head…
‘I’m only too well aware –’ meeting her eyes again – ‘that from an outside viewpoint – from the distance of London, for instance – it might – as you say… The truth is that I only caught on to what was happening after – well, quite some time. Then I was trying frantically to get warnings to certain others – right up to the last minute. Of course I had a good idea of the danger I was in myself, in fact I’d arranged a flight out by Lysander – not just to save my own skin, but in full awareness that – well, a red-hot skewer applied to a man’s eyeball, for instance—’
‘Wasn’t it London’s initiative – to bring you back for de-briefing?’
‘That probably was their view of it. But—’
She could have ripped into him at that point, drawn blood. There was a risk in not doing so, in fact – that he might realize in retrospect if not immediately that she could have, and wonder why she’d been holding back. The answer to which might be obvious… Dark eyes on hers, watching for belief or disbelief; telling her, ‘They arrested me on the afternoon of the day I was supposed to be picked up by Lysander. That very night I would have been at the Soucelles field…’
Her cue then, if ever there’d been one. She told him – interrupting some detail about the timing of his arrest – ‘You’d have been at Soucelles to meet me. Bringing me a return rail ticket to Rennes via Le Mans – oh, and a consigne ticket for a parcel I was to collect there – at Le Mans. But you weren’t at the field, so—’
‘Christ – you—’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘Know what? Look – I had the tickets and the consigne receipt on me when I was arrested! But – you—’
‘You didn’t know the agent you’d be meeting at Soucelles was code-named “Zoé”?’
‘I’d been given no name at all. But those rail tickets and the consigne slip – I can tell you I was in despair!’
‘Fortunately I went by bike instead of train. They’d have had the Le Mans consigne staked out, wouldn’t they? And I’d have walked into it. Getting through Rennes wasn’t without its dangers either. Did you know of a réseau that was based in Rennes?’
‘I don’t think so…’
‘Or of an individual by name of Alain Noally?’
‘The sculptor?’
‘Also chef de réseau. That’s to say he was.’ She let it go: Noally had told her that night that he’d never had any direct contact with ‘Hector’, and although there was a logical progression of events which she and Lise had worked out, it would have been more easily deniable than provable. ‘Hector’ shaking his head: ‘You went all that way by bike…’
‘In foul weather, too. And a lot further – long way west of Rennes. But a few weeks later – car crash, hospital in Morlaix.’
‘And now, here.’
‘All one sequence, isn’t it – except for it turning out to be your father’s factory we’re concerned with. That’s coincidence, all right – even if it’s basically inconsequential. Listen – getting back to that day in Paris – before I even knew you had a father – this is fact, my memory’s quite clear – in that upstairs room in Rue des Saussaies I was strapped to a chair – remember? – waiting to be interrogated, and you tried to persuade me to tell them all they wanted to know? It would have been mainly names and whereabouts of other agents. More victims. Meanwhile you were walking around – free, no guards or—’
‘Just eyes on every move, ears on every word! Free? D’you imagine I could’ve walked out into the street?’
‘You tried to persuade me that the V1s had England on the point of suing for peace, Allied armies in Normandy were bogged down and about to be driven back into the sea, there was no hope at all for us, I might as well give up, tell them every damn thing I knew!’
‘Justine – they had tape-machines in all those rooms. All right – I was doing what I was told – I’m not proud of it—’
‘Briefed you on the prisoner’s background before each softening-up exercise, did they?’
‘I was – rehearsed, you might say, yes. But—’
‘But?’ She laughed, incredulously. ‘What do we get now – mitigating circumstances?’
‘Justine – you’re interrogator, judge and jury, evidently—’
‘Perhaps it’s as well for you that I’m nothin
g of the sort. But a number of agents were arrested at that time – as you’d know, of course – and one lot – women – were en route to Ravensbrück with me on that same train – and did not escape. I remember each one of them quite clearly – I can shut my eyes and – see them. I do have – an interest, you might say… Tell me – when you were arrested, did they knock you about, torture you at all?’
‘The answer to what you’re really asking is that I told them nothing they didn’t already know. They – made use of me – in the ways you saw, and in which I was as unhelpful as I could be – but – if it means anything to you at all, my sister’s life was still at stake, remember—’
‘All right – not much left to say about Rue des Saussaies, is there – let’s talk about your sister. You don’t mind?’
‘I’d like to convince you that – well, you think I was turned, but a better word would be trapped. I admit, by my own blundering, but—’
‘They told you just recently your sister had been sent east, but there’s a chance – your father said – she might not have been?’
Staring at her: then a deep breath, a shrug… ‘All right. That now. Yes – it’s a straw to clutch at. He did clutch at it. Needs to – she was always his favourite… It was a Gestapo major, man called Hammerling – lost his temper. I’d referred to the expectation they’ll soon be driven out of France – I was suggesting they might release me and Claire right away – and he blew up, screamed at me that I’d be shipped out too, or shot. So – I don’t know… But I escaped later that same day – it wasn’t at all difficult, I simply saw the opportunity, and – I was out.’
Hammerling was the Gestapo major who’d questioned her in the Morlaix hospital, she remembered. She could easily visualize that fit of temper. In the hospital he’d had her manacled to her bed.
‘You said it was your fault Clare was arrested?’
‘Yes. Another – confession… She had an apartment in Fontainebleau. She worked at the factory but went back there most nights and always for weekends. On the side, she helped in an escape line that specialized in shot-down airmen. It happened I had two people – a married couple, local employees of a réseau in Neuilly, for whom I needed a safe-house for two nights, and I asked her if she’d put them up. I was to fetch them then and take them to a certain field we were using near Pithiviers – you see, Fontainebleau was in the right direction. Well – they may have been followed to her flat. I’d sent them on their own, simply given them the address. Possibly they were arrested on the way there and, had the address on them. Whatever – I’d told them I’d be fetching them on a certain evening – I went along, rang the bell, and what opened the door was a young Boche. Gestapo – and two more of them inside, both Frenchmen.’
‘But they let you go free – and held Claire hostage?’
‘As I was given to understand it then, it was to put pressure on my father. They told me to go down to St Valéry and spell it out to him. She’d be all right as long as he continued to co-operate – keep the work-force in order and hard at it, and neither ask nor answer questions – so forth.’
‘And what were you to do?’
‘Continue as his Paris representative. You see, I truly thought they didn’t know I was SOE, at that stage. Their questions were all about the escape line – Claire’s – actually not hers, but the one she helped with from time to time. They seemed to take it for granted that I’d been as much involved in it as she had. But they planted it in my mind quite adroitly—’
‘Planted what?’
‘Well – the way I saw it was that they were delighted to have caught me out – caught us out – to have something over my father, ensure he stayed in line. There was no mention of SOE, none at all. They hadn’t caught a sniff of it, I thought. Made me feel good, actually – running rings round them, you know?’
‘Did you think your father needed to have any threat hanging over him?’
‘No, to tell the truth, I thought – using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut, maybe. On the other hand the importance of security around the rocket-casing business must have seemed to them—’
‘Yes. I dare say… Did you tell them where you’d have taken that couple, from Claire’s apartment?’
‘No. I’ve never been an informer, Justine. There was a field we weren’t using any more – we’d given it up because I’d thought it might have been compromised – and I mentioned that one. Here’s our friend again…’
Guy Trainel, with another sack of charcoal; there were several already in the pick-up. The old man was sweating, grunting as he swung the sack up and dumped it in.
Turning to them, this time: ‘And that’s the lot!’
‘Hard graft, eh?’
A snort: ‘Used not to be…’
Shuffling off. André told Rosie, ‘They’d left me on the loose. I realized later, to have me followed. Every time I went out of Paris, or for instance met some colleague – who might have been a pianist or a courier. I had to make contact with them every few days, and I’d sworn to let them know immediately if I was called on to handle others on the run. In fact of course that didn’t happen. I’d told them I didn’t think it would – with my sister arrested, and that pair disappeared, sensible people would stay clear.’
‘You didn’t know anything about others involved?’
‘No. A voice on a telephone would be all. And for cover generally I had a full social life – my work for Marchéval’s wasn’t exactly arduous. I mixed with – you know, all sorts of—’
‘You mean you had girlfriends.’
‘Well – of course. Actually what I’m saying is I thought I had adequate cover, for my work for Baker Street. And as I was on my father’s payroll, and he was working for the blasted Reich, it didn’t surprise me to be left to get on with it… D’you see?’
She nodded. She’d been thinking of asking him – in reference to girlfriends – about Huguette Lambert. The chance had gone now – maybe just as well… Nodding: ‘Yes. Oddly enough, I do.’
‘They were clever, the way they induced me to think along those lines – that I was getting away with it, had them fooled – while in fact all the time – God, every step I took – every word on a telephone… Then when I did begin to catch on – arrest. D’you see?’ Glancing round: ‘Seems we’re on the move. But they arrested me, you see, because they’d realized I’d finally got wise to it!’
Emile Guichard was coming over – leaving Jacques at the hut settling his business with Trainel. Rosie asked, ‘One thing, quickly. Why haven’t you contacted Baker Street, since escaping?’
‘How do you know I haven’t?’
‘Wouldn’t be here—’
‘Any case – one, no way to do it – not safely. No contact I’d had before could possibly be safe. I know, I know, as bad as that. But also, my father’s situation – I had to see him. And – the whole thing’s on the brink, there isn’t time to – observe formalities, is there. Later, sure I’ll—’
He broke off, nodded to Guichard. ‘Decided?’
‘Yes. You get your way. Tomorrow night, and we’ll finalize plans between now and then. Justine, it has to be our own plan – André knows the place inside-out, and they’ll be my men with him – but you’ll want to be in on it, won’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Mainly so I can send London a first-hand report. But also if you want help with the fireworks—’
‘Exactly. And Jacques knows where and when, he’ll bring you. Meanwhile, tell your people to lay off?’
Chapter 15
The alarm-clock went off under the bedclothes at five to twelve, and her waking thought was that in twenty-four hours exactly she’d be with the Maquisards, starting off from the timber-yard where Jacques would be taking her at, or by, eleven. No sleep at all, she guessed, tomorrow night. Out of bed by this time, with the curtains pulled shut and the light on, paying out aerial wire. Transceiver now: plugged into the mains and switched to ‘receive’. Headset on. She’d fitted the night-time crystal
before she’d gone to bed.
Waiting, then; virtually certain they’d have something for her.
She’d added to the message she’d transmitted this afternoon,
Postscript, having conferred with Tamerlan and Hector. Sabotage of one crucial machine and all completed casings still on site is scheduled for night of Wednesday/Thursday. Suggest Jupiter be postponed pending my further report. Will not repeat not be in position to listen out that night. Hector has plausible but flawed explanations of past events and I will try to induce him to submit to de-briefing in UK later.
Fat chance of that, she thought. Although he’d begun to say he would – then cut himself short, conveniently. But – to put it on the record as one’s intention, was all. Marilyn would understand this, and if necessary explain it to Buck.
The message had gone off at about seven; she’d drafted and then encoded the PS in Jacques’ gazo in the clearing before they’d started back. Guichard and André had left by then, and the old man had been stoking up his kiln; in the gazo’s cab the loudest sound apart from her own breathing had been the bubbling of Jacques’ pipe. She hadn’t intended transmitting from the clearing; he’d had some other spot in mind, which had meant taking a slightly longer route home.
Nothing yet, from Sevenoaks. One minute past midnight. Wednesday, now. One week since de Plesse had driven her to Nancy and she’d dumped herself and the cat on Guillaume. It felt more like a month.
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