Blue Noon

by Robert Ryan

‘You know, turns out he wasn’t who we thought he was. Name wasn’t Mason. Wasn’t a captain, even.’ He paused for effect. ‘Sergeant who embezzled Mess funds.’

  ‘A sergeant?’ Neave felt himself redden.

  ‘An oik, Neave, an oik. Oh, don’t blame yourself. Pulled the wool over many people’s eyes.’ Dansey turned and smiled.

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Well, he’s your problem. MI9’s, that is. But if I were in your shoes …’

  ‘I’d be grateful for any advice,’ said Neave, his voice thick.

  ‘I’d issue a Red Ribbon on him.’

  Neave nodded. A red ribbon wrapped around a file meant just one thing. Shoot on sight. ‘I’ll get onto it as soon as we get back,’ he said. A sergeant. An oik. He could sense how low he had tumbled in Dansey’s estimation. The small amount of appetite he had for racing had evaporated entirely now, all he really wanted to do was get back, but he could tell Dansey was just hitting his stride.

  ‘Excellent.’ Claude Dansey pointed to one of the gesticulating bookies in his brown suit and bowler. ‘Shall we try Phil Magas? He looks like an honest chap.’

  Harry shifted his position in the darkness, fighting off the craving for a cigarette. She’d smell it as soon as she came in, and he’d lose the element of surprise. He could hear the muffled noises of the street, the loud conversations in the café opposite, the clink of glasses from the bar, a snatch of music from a club above the café, a ship’s horn drifting across the harbour. These were the comforting sounds of a normal night in Marseilles. Except they no longer comforted him.

  It had taken him many painful hours to get free from King’s noose. By the time he had undone his hands and managed to open the noose and slip it off, he could no longer walk: the muscles in his legs had spasmed, and he crumpled.

  The whole night had passed, hidden away in that copse on the hillside—had the blanket and water been left deliberately?—before he could manage to move, slowly. It was close to two days before he could get around without drawing attention to himself with his hobbling gait.

  Once he could walk, he headed for his and Odile’s house. There was a bunch of wilted lilies on the table, the room full of their decay. He had found the note, ostensibly written by him, and he knew what they had done, what King had done. Everyone had been betrayed.

  Over the next few days he retraced the ratline routing. The barn where the airmen had been held was still smouldering, but no sign of the occupants, other than a charred RAF tunic in the ruins. The forgery set-up in Abbeville was gone, the people disappeared along with the printing press; the safe houses en route to Paris, also gone. Lepers and the other helpers, missing. Gérard’s restaurant had closed for a ‘holiday’ and the brothel had German guards stationed on the outside.

  Tante Clara had survived, and he warned her that she should neither see nor trust anyone from the group now. Soon those who cracked in the cellars of Foch and Fresnes would be turned out onto the street to rope in others. He impressed on her that people would say he had done terrible things, and that she must not believe them.

  Clara had hugged him, told him she knew he was in trouble, but that she loved him all the same. She gave him a roll of money, a gesture of solidarity that almost made him want to cry.

  Harry travelled south again. The café at the river, another burnt shell. In Tours, most of the line’s addresses had a saloon car parked outside, the occupants slumped down in their seats. A trail of destruction and misery and death was snaking through the country, cursing his name as it went. Who would believe him, how could he get a hearing amid the chaos of grief and loss?

  Where was Odile? Had the Germans arrested her? Had she realised Harry was as much a dupe as she? Unlikely. The thought that she, too, was learning to hate him, snuffing out their love, was unbearable.

  Harry heard the rattle of keys in the apartment’s outer door. He stood up and unlatched the French doors behind him to give him an exit.

  A rattle of cups from the kitchen, but no voices. She was alone.

  The bedroom door opened and he saw her silhouetted there, drink in one hand, purse in the other, the hall light shining through the cotton fabric of her dress.

  ‘Don’t turn on the main light.’

  He had expected a scream, a protest of some kind, but she asked calmly: ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Speak up.’

  ‘This is up.’ His voice was a hoarse rasp.

  ‘Can I put the bedside lamp on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lucy flicked on the small, yellow bulb and he saw her start. ‘My God, I didn’t expect you. Here. You … Pat O’Leary wants you dead.’

  ‘He’ll have to stand in line. I’m thinking of selling tickets.’ He remembered Parkhill in Hong Kong. He’d promised him the best seats in the house.

  ‘Why did you do it, Harry?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘I’m not a traitor.’

  She sat on the bed and removed her shoes, massaging her toes. ‘The order is shoot to kill, you know.’

  ‘No trial?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did anyone ask why? Why they wouldn’t want to court martial me?’

  ‘Beyond the pale, Harry. The full story came across from London. Hong Kong, cheque forgery, desertion. The lot. Plus all that money you got from here.’

  ‘I know it looks bad.’

  ‘You don’t know shit, Harry.’

  ‘Lucy. You asked me once if I was a bad boy. The answer is—yes. But not that bad. My own wife? You have to believe me.’

  ‘You want a cigarette, Harry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mind if I have one?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Lucy opened the bedside cabinet and stopped. Harry took the little gun from his waistband. ‘It’s here, Lucy.’

  She smiled faintly.

  ‘Phone’s disconnected, too. I need some money, Lucy.’

  ‘I bet you do.’

  ‘I can tie you up and search the flat.’

  ‘No need. Here.’

  She took a fold of notes from her purse and flung them onto the bed. Cautiously, he reached over and pocketed it.

  ‘One more thing. Where is King?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘King.’ Harry gave a quick description.

  ‘Doesn’t ring any bells. Who is he?’

  ‘The man who got me into this. O’Leary—’ He fumbled for the Belgian’s real name. ‘Guérisse. He knows him as Rex. It was his doing …’

  ‘Oh, Harry …’ she said patronisingly. ‘It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?’

  He realised he was wasting precious time. ‘I’m going to go out of these French doors and disappear. If you stick your head out I’ll shoot it off.’

  ‘I won’t do anything stupid, Harry. You’re not worth it’

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t believe me, Lucy.’

  ‘I knew when you drank my whisky you were no good. So long, Harry. Make the most of what time you have.’ As he slid through the drapes, she raised her voice. ‘Because they’ll find you, Harry. Wherever you go, they’ll find you.’

  Harry checked into a flophouse near the port, shaved off his moustache and clippered his hair even shorter. Lucy had given him close to ten thousand francs, but after two card games, and an arrangement with two young girls and a sailor, he had quadrupled his stake. Just like old times.

  However, he was aware that sometimes people looked too closely, and he was sure one man pointed him out across the bar. It was time to leave Marseilles. He couldn’t use the same routing back north, though. So instead of heading north-west to Toulouse as usual, he took the train for Lyon. From there, he had a good chance of crossing the border into Switzerland, finding the British consulate in Geneva, perhaps making them believe what had happened. Or was that suicide?

  Perrache, the main station for Lyon, was one of the most heavily watched in th
e ZNO, by French and German security services alike, so he alighted at Vienne and took a creaking charcoal-propelled bus to La Mulatière, where he boarded a trolley for the centre of Lyon.

  He walked from the terminus down the Cours Lafayette towards the Rhône, enjoying the sun on his back and the clean air after hours inhaling other people’s breath and sweat. He was depressed by the city. He had been through it many times, whenever he had to vary the route south, but now it was a shadow of itself. The butchers’ shops showed thin wares, the bouchans were open for business, but the food on the plates had a meagre, synthetic look, the famous sausages filled with some kind of coarse oats or grain.

  At a roadside stall, Harry stopped and stared at the oily black bodies lined up in neat rows. With a shock he realised they were crows, selling for ten francs each. Winter was coming, and it was clear it was going to be hard. Like the rest of France, stoical, hardworking Lyon had finally succumbed to the crushing hegemony of the Reich’s war machine.

  He crossed the river, walking as casually as he could over the bridge. He knew it’d be under observation, the crossings always were. Once over the Rhône, he veered south, heading for the enormous Place Bellecour, the focal point of the tongue of land between the two rivers, and the café on the north-west corner. He put his suitcase down, slid onto a metal stool, and ordered an Izarra, one of the few bottles remaining on the liqueur shelf that had more than a sticky centimetre left in the bottom.

  A man could get lost in Lyon, he thought. Up above him were the high villages of the old town, and to the north the traboules of La Croix-Rousée, the old silk weavers’ district, a network of tunnels, covered passages and secret doorways. The sort of people who used such clandestine passageways were his kind of people, the old Harry’s kind at least. They would know how to get a man from here to Geneva, and they would know how to charge for it. He would need more than forty thousand francs. That shouldn’t be a problem, though.

  He scanned his fellow customers, but nobody caught his eye. There was a palpable feeling of unease. The barman wiped the counter in front of him and nodded at his cardboard case.

  ‘Just got in?’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Two hundred and eighty extra police came in yesterday.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Under some SS major. Looking for illegal transmitters.’

  Harry smiled and shook his head. The man thought he had a radio in the case.

  ‘If they are looking for a couple of old towels and a sponge bag, I’m their man.’

  ‘Everybody’s their man,’ he said glumly and walked away to serve another customer, who had made sure he stood as far away from Harry as possible. Lyon had never been a particularly friendly city, its inhabitants reserved, slow to warm to anyone, but it was clear that strangers were less welcome than ever. He should get off the streets.

  Harry drained the liqueur, left his payment on the bar, walked back over the Rhône and checked in at the Angleterre, a hotel he had used before on his journeys south.

  He took a shallow lukewarm bath while he thought about the money question. He had information that was worth a fortune to the Germans. Not around Lille, that was all shot to hell, but down in Marseilles. Caskie, Guérisse, Lucy, he could give them a dozen names and addresses.

  But could he do it? After all, they were out to get him. He would just be saving his own neck. They had no compunction about condemning him to death. Self defence, almost.

  He got out of the bath, dried himself, checked his neck was healing well, and dressed. He tried to shake off the image of Monveaux that kept coming back to him, the bodies slowly twirling at the end of a rope. That was why he couldn’t do it now. He’d had a noose round his own neck. He couldn’t do it to anyone else.

  He heard the pass key in the lock and the door swung slowly open to reveal three men, two of them with guns. The one in the centre stepped forward. ‘Harold Mason? Cole? Paul? Which is it?’

  Harry shrugged. His papers were in none of those names. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. My name is Joseph Deram. You are?’

  ‘Triffe. DST.’ Bloody hell, he thought, the Direction de la Surveillance du Terroire was French counter-espionage. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of being a German agent.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Harry was stunned. Since when was being a German agent in Vichy France a crime? ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked firmly.

  ‘It is a crime to carry out espionage on French soil. Any espionage.’

  Harry laughed out loud. ‘Monsieur Triffe—’

  ‘Colonel Triffe. This isn’t the Occupied Zone. You people think you can come in and do as you please. This is Free France, my friend. So far in Lyon, we have arrested one hundred and eighteen of your fellow agents.’

  ‘That’s ludicrous.’ Harry couldn’t believe his ears. He had spent close to two years trying to avoid the hundreds of informers and V-men that infested the south. Now, finally, he meets the good guys?

  ‘We have shot six,’ added Triffe with some satisfaction.

  Harry blanched and sat on the soft, saggy bed, trying to look relaxed. ‘You must be mistaken.’

  Triffe beckoned to someone on the landing and a familiar figure emerged from the shadows. Odile stared at him with utter loathing. Harry was halfway to his feet, trying to get some words out, when she spoke, calmly, ‘That’s him. That’s Harry Cole. That’s the traitor.’

  Twenty-three

  THEY HAD BEATEN HARRY after his arrest. One eye was swollen shut, his lips had puffed up and a couple of teeth were gone. The little finger on his left hand was broken and a vertebra chipped from his being repeatedly flung to the stone floor. One of his nipples had been sawn off with a penknife. The soles of his feet were crisped with hot irons. His foreskin was torn, and bore the deep tooth marks from the pliers. Whole sections of his body were a glistening aubergine-purple.

  At first Harry had insisted on telling his tormentors the truth. Then, when they dismissed his story as fantasy, he had tried to guess what they wanted to know. Finally he had asked them to tell him what they needed him to say for them to stop.

  Now he lay in the fortress-prison of Fort Montluc, with lice running through his clothes and hair, vermin sneaking up and sniffing at him and a fever making his bones ache.

  The cell was barely three metres square. A tiny slit high in one wall gave a view of the railway bridge and the tobacco factory. Now and then he heard the sound of keys being scraped along bars, a discordant jangle, sawing at already frayed nerves. Franzel, the warden, was adding his own little irritant to the mix.

  Once a week, perhaps twice, they heard the soldiers’ low voices as the firing squad was assembled. Then a few barked orders, the shots and the sound of a body being dragged away.

  The key turned in the lock, the door opened, and the grey light of the main courtyard bled into the room, causing his one good eye to weep. Colonel Triffe looked down at him with his usual contempt. ‘You should know this. I have sent a report to London on all you have confessed, all the damage that you have wreaked.’ He neglected to add that London had demanded summary execution for Cole, but Triffe wanted this done according to French law. He knew very well how Red Ribbon actions could come back to haunt you years down the line, when, of course, the English SIS would deny any such order existed. By the book was best, Triffe had decided long ago.

  ‘You can do one last decent thing. Maybe erase a little of the stain on your soul, who knows? You can save the girl. Technically, she handed the network to the Germans.’

  ‘I need some water.’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Harry asked, aware that no normal DST man would report to London.

  ‘A patriot.’

  Harry smiled, as best he could. ‘That’s what every shit says.’

  Triffe grinned back without humour. Over his shoulder Harry could see the silhouette of Odile framed in the doorway.

  ‘Odile …’ he managed to say.

  Triffe sto
od, blocking his view of her, and barked at him: ‘Do you confirm that you betrayed Frenchmen to the German field police and security services? And used this girl as your unwitting dupe?’

  It was clear now. He was to take responsibility for everything, the evil puppet master who pulled Odile’s strings.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘A yes or no,’ Triffe barked, pressing his boot against Harry’s thigh.

  Harry took a deep breath. ‘Yes. She knew nothing. Me. It was all my doing.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They withdrew, locking him back into the darkness. Outside he heard Odile’s voice, sharp and clear in contrast to his own. ‘What will happen to him?’ she asked.

  Triffe’s voice was much deeper, a rumble like summer thunder. ‘We will follow the law. There will be a tribunal. You will be acquitted. Harry Cole will be sentenced to death.’

  And so it came to be. November 16, 1942: Harold Cole, German spy, was to be shot at Montluc prison.

  Part Three

  Twenty-four

  Paris, early 1943

  GÉRARD THE RESTAURATEUR WALKED through to the rear of the cellar that ran beneath his establishment and inspected the false wall that divided it. It was still perfect after three years, still capable of fooling all but the most careful scrutiny. Behind the barricade that had split his cellar in two was his stock of fine wines and champagne, kept from the Germans who had drunk the rest of his racks dry. Now he was down to serving very poor table wine, but at least he was able to charge Grand Vin prices for it.

  He climbed the dusty wooden stairs back into the empty restaurant and made for the kitchen, where the meagre pickings he was meant to invent a menu from were laid out on the table. In his mind, he juggled combinations of the scrawny rabbits, grey potatoes, a few pigeons, some beans, a sack of gnarled carrots, a few strands of herbs and a slab of butter that he suspected had been adulterated—the white marbling that ran through it looked highly dubious to him. Like most establishments these days, Gérard served whatever he had been able to buy or scrounge, and the customer could take it or leave it.