Into the Fire

by Into the Fire (retail) (epub)

  ‘Let’s forget your head. If you think it’s painful – well, believe me, you don’t know what pain is – yet. But – let’s see if we can’t spare you that. As I said – you’d be best advised to cooperate with us. First – obviously – by providing truthful answers to my questions – which you will do, that’s a foregone conclusion – but for a long-term, complete solution – you should give serious thought to working with us. It would be enormously to your advantage. In fact it’s a privilege I’m offering you. Not only would you remain alive – and what one might call uncrippled – you’d live in comfort and security, be well looked after, have no financial problems – and you’ll be joining the winning side. What d’you say?’

  ‘I’ll – think about it.’

  The forty-eight hours during which one was expected to hold out had already been exceeded: that was a certainty; the only doubt was whether she’d been here three days or four. But how soon after the event César might have had the news, she’d no idea – couldn’t be sure he would know, even – except that when she hadn’t reappeared he’d have contacted Madame Plumier, she guessed – or one of the neighbouring réseaux.

  Except they’d have arrested Plumier’s wife, she supposed. Poor woman…

  Prinz bent over the file again, flipped over a page or two. Tapping down the text with a pencil-point…

  ‘All right.’ He sat back. ‘Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre – as you call yourself. Let’s start on some basic questions. Such as – well, you’re a radio operator. You’ve admitted that. You could hardly deny it, could you, seeing you had the radio with you when you were taken? Incidentally, you damaged it at the time of your arrest, but it’s being repaired – you may like to know this, because all we’d really want is that you’d use the transceiver from time to time, under our direction. Not so onerous – in return for so much?’

  He might as well have been talking Chinese. Funny – you’d imagined it, woken some nights sweating from the nightmare, but you’d never believed – really, fundamentally – that you’d end up facing the unspeakable, unthinkable; unable realistically to see any hope at all of remaining alive for any length of time beyond it. Knowing what had happened to others: also that once these creatures were sure they had as much information – or as little – as they were likely to get, they had no interest whatsoever in keeping one alive.

  He’d sighed, histrionically. ‘Very well. Radio codes and checks. Checks, primarily. Codes aren’t much of a problem – that rigmarole on the silk thing you had. Our cryptographers’ll make short work of that. But the checks – you’d have at least two, am I right?’

  There were three. The ‘bluff’ was the one an agent was permitted to divulge – under torture – and the other two were the ‘security’ and the ‘random’. The security check was an individual hallmark, exclusive to each operator, a spelling mistake which had to appear in say the third or the eleventh word of every message he or she transmitted. If there wasn’t an error where there should have been, Baker Street would know it was a fake, that the radio was probably in enemy control.

  There was a fourth, far more natural check, too – what was known as the operator’s ‘individual fist’. Styles of Morse transmission were as distinctive as fingerprints.

  ‘Well?’

  She stared at him. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You know damn well what I mean! Your radio checks – describe them!’

  ‘I-don’t think I can.’

  ‘You don’t, eh?’

  ‘I think – the blow on my head—’

  ‘Oh. Lost your memory.’ He nodded as if that was understandable, and reached to a bell-push. ‘Perhaps we can help you to regain it.’

  * * *

  There’d been an interval. Another one had come in, in answer to the bell, and Prinz had absented himself for a few minutes. For a pee, she guessed. Or to rack up her state of fright? Glancing at her as he re-entered… ‘Once you start talking, you won’t want to stop. Matter of breaking the ice, that’s all.’ A pause, watching her: she’d been with Ben, was trying her damnedest to stay with him… Prinz gestured, then, and this other one – also in civvies, but not an officer – judging by the way Prinz spoke to him – put the shovel down on the floor near her, pulled her off the chair and forced her down on it – on her knees, on the edge of the shovel’s blade, so that the wooden shaft tilted upwards.

  ‘We’ll talk about radio checks next time. Sit down together with a pencil and paper, easier that way. Meanwhile, to get you started – try these questions. If anything, they’re more important… Two weeks ago – Wednesday 21st, Thursday 22nd, Friday 23rd – oh, and one on the Saturday too – there were a number of radio transmissions from differing locations around Rouen and Amiens. Obviously it was you, your radio. Were you calling for arms-drops, by any chance?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘All right.’ He nodded to the other one: a big man with an immensely thick neck. He put one foot on the raised handle of the shovel, then his weight on it: the blade was forced up into the sinew between her kneecaps and shinbones.

  She screamed.

  ‘How’s the memory doing?’

  Screaming helped – a little. The big one, keeping his weight on the shovel, stooped and hit her in the face backhanded so that her head snapped back. ‘Upright! Not bend forward! Upright!’

  There’d be worse than this. It didn’t seem possible, but she knew there would be. Think about hating them: of the war ending, nooses round their necks. Jesus Christ—

  ‘Any recollection yet?’

  ‘Upright!’

  Head back, body arched, screaming…

  ‘Let it down, Riess.’

  She fell forward – on all fours. Nobody hit her. The pain was still pumping through her, but dully, like pulsing echoes of what it had been. Prinz asked her, ‘Do you want to tell me about the transmissions?’

  ‘There was another pianist—’

  ‘Romeo, d’you mean?’

  ‘Yes —yes. He—’

  ‘Again, Reiss.’

  ‘Up!’

  * * *

  ‘They were for weapons drops!’

  She couldn’t stand. On the chair again with her head back, eyes shut where tears had streamed, still trickled. She must have told him, she realized. Hadn’t meant to. As if some internal force… Like pressing a boil, pus burst out. Prinz’s voice again: ‘You see, when you supply an answer, the pain stops. A correct answer, mind you. Are you hearing me? Look at me… That’s better. Answer now – are you hearing me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So much easier, to answer. Truthfully, of course. We know enough already, you see, that you won’t get away with lies. I told you our information’s sketchy at this stage, but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid. Listen – if you lie to me again, I’ll have you whipped. The lie about Romeo, for instance – we know he was told by your masters in London to stay off the air – some time ago, when they were calling him ‘Toby’. New réseau, new code-name… But it could only have been you. Another point – to warn you, so as to avoid further silliness – and a whipping – we know not only about you – ‘Angel’ as they call you – but also your new Organizer. César, alias Michel Rossier? By the way, you’ve been masquerading as a parfumeuse, I see…’ He sat back, shutting the file: ‘Anyway – I’ll have Rossier in that chair, before much longer. All I’m saying now is I’ll recognize a lie when I hear one – and you’ll regret it, I promise you… On the other hand – if you’d decide to work with us – no more pain, no tears – isn’t that a far better idea? Tell you what – would you like some coffee? Or tea – a cup of tea – while you think about it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Good. I’ll have one with you. And a cigarette, eh? But – oh, look, just a few things I really would like to clear up first. Just help me on this… The drops you asked for – now we know it was you – where are they to take place, and on what dates, and in each case the identity of the man or men for who
m you were arranging it. That’s a lot of questions, so – just a minute, I’ll make notes as you dictate.’

  She heard his chair scrape. And a mutter, ‘Then it’ll all be cleared away, we can relax.’ She shut her eyes again, put her head back and slightly to one side, which at the moment seemed to help it. Clear it, too – seeing that it could not have been César – why would they torture her to get information which they’d have had already?

  ‘All right. The names and the locations. Go ahead.’ Thinking of Ben and herself in that London dawn…

  The best ever. Not only physically, but metaphysically, height and depth of love in its truest, also wildest sense. Like she’d wanted it to be with Johnny and at one stage had imagined the possibility of it becoming – glimpsed the existence of such a plane and allowed herself the frantic hope they’d stood a chance of reaching it. Then lost him – lost him a bloody age before she’d found Ben.

  ‘You aren’t going to start being stupid again, I hope?’

  She remembered Romeo saying something like ‘So – it can be done…’ Meaning that it was possible to hold out – when he’d been telling her about that girl who’d made it—

  ‘All right. Wasting time here. Riess—’

  * * *

  She’d passed out. A recollection of falling, and of voices shouting at her, then darkness and Ben telling her it was going to be all right, he wouldn’t let them touch her again. Nightmare, though, because she’d dreamed that – the bit about Ben – and what was real was the solid and immoveable fact that the only way to stop it happening would be to give in and start naming names. Which she could not do, ever – irrespective of what they might do to her. It was a law she’d had implanted in her brain for a long time now and couldn’t break – at least, not consciously.

  So they’d kill her.

  Eventually. Well, they would. It wasn’t a supposition or make-believe, it was fact.

  Think of something else. Ben, for choice. Whether he’d ever hear of this. Probably only of the fact she’d died. Died in Gestapo hands, maybe. It did leak out – had with those others, anyway. And having old links to S.I.S. – yes, he would… She was being dragged along, her feet trailing. ‘Giving you a bath, now. Cool you off, eh?’

  It was a bathroom. Huge brass taps, both of them running, water thundering in… And she knew about this one. They’d been put through it – those who volunteered for it had – in the resistance-to-interrogation course in Hampshire. She hadn’t actually undergone it but some of the men had.

  ‘That’s deep enough.’

  Cessation of water-noise. The one holding her up asked ‘Want to strip off, or go in as you are?’

  She was in a skirt and a blouse, and the blouse was filthy. But the cyanide pill – in its rice-paper wrapping and the gelatine that might not be quite as good as new by now – any lengthy immersion, for Christ’s sake…

  But stripping off didn’t appeal either. And they might spot it – find it… The one who’d shut the taps off was grinning at the big one, glancing back at her: ‘Which’ll it be?’

  ‘As I am.’

  Even if it squashed or leaked, she might be able to suck the dregs out of the little pocket. When they put her back in the cell tonight – if they did, if she didn’t drown here – once the handcuffs were off for the bread and water—

  ‘In you go, then!’

  At the first bite, they’d promised. Barely time to swallow.

  Might all end here anyway: they might go too far and drown her. The technique involved coming as close as possible to drowning the prisoner, taking him or her to the limit: head back, forced under, held under until you were damn near drowned, then you’d be hauled up and allowed a breath or two, then down again, under – worse each time.

  Victims had drowned, on occasion – so the instructors had said: either drowned or suffered heart-failure. The answer was therefore – ludicrous as it had sounded in those days – in a sense, to help them.

  If you wanted to live. She didn’t, so she’d fight.

  ‘If you want to start talking – let us know, eh?’

  Guttural pidgin-French…

  God, let me drown!

  Nearly did, once – in the river, the Little Ouse. Not long after they’d settled back in England. It had ruined a Brownie camera they’d given her for her birthday: she’d been stalking an otter, to photograph it, slipped and been carried into a deep pool. Uncle Bertie, who’d lived on one lung since 1918 when he and his platoon had been caught in German gas, had jumped in and fished her out.

  Under. Roaring in her ears, pressure, agony in the damaged side of her head where it was being forced against the bottom of the bath. She’d let her breath go – had to. Nothing like the river: trying to picture Uncle Bertie – who was not here this time. She was drowning: opening her mouth to shout – swallowing river-water, the current dragging her down…

  Conscious again – some time later, she didn’t know how long. The big one was holding her up by the hair with one hand, using the other to slap her face to and fro.

  ‘You there? You there now?’

  ‘Eyes are open.’

  ‘OK. This time, a real good one… You want to drown?’

  * * *

  Vidor asked Ben, ‘Want me to try to get you to Grac’h Zu?’

  Staring at him, across the table. This was in the Brodards’ house, the kitchen. Ben had been sleeping in the old man’s room – since that first night when Solange had slept in his arms with the overcoat over her nightdress and he hadn’t slept at all, only lain there wondering about – well, precisely what Vidor had just asked him – that was still the crucial question – and how long before Vidor got back, what the hell to do if he did not get back… Watching the light grow outside, hearing the dawn chorus and the barnyard rooster, then the dog whining and jerking at its chain: and in the morning light, Solange’s face as quiet and unstressed as a child’s, her soft reddish-brown hair tickling his lips.

  Since then he’d slept in her father’s room. Because she’d wanted to have him in the house, also because if the Boches came back you wouldn’t want signs of occupation of that loft.

  He answered Vidor’s question with one of his own. ‘Are you saying this pinpoint is busted?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Hard brown eyes on Ben’s: a small shake of the head. ‘At least – OK, maybe I’m just staving it off because I don’t want to give up here… There again, there is a hope – two hopes, if they’re real. One, night patrols on the roads seem fewer, and two, still no activity around the islands. Course, that could be bluff. At worst, it’s even possible they’re waiting for the moon – guessing we are, someone might be… Another thing though is getting you to Grac’h Zu still won’t be plain sailing. No certainty about it. I learnt a lesson the other day, you know?’

  He’d had to bring the airmen back, instead of leaving them in an escape réseau’s hands in Bordeaux. All four were at the Durands’ house now, where Ben had been. There’d been a crisis in the Bordeaux area too, apparently, German infiltration of the group that would have taken the airmen down through the Landes via Bayonne to St Jean de Luz. Getting them back to Lannilis had also had its problems, Vidor had found; he’d decided to return by a different route and had run into the hornet’s nest his friends had stirred up with their sabotage operation at St Renan.

  Main roads and main railway routes seemed to be the best bet now, he’d concluded. Country lanes and minor branch lines, in coastal regions, anyway, were getting more than their fair share of attention. It followed therefore that transferring across-country to Grac’h Zu might be a very chancy business.

  Solange joined them in the kitchen. Early afternoon: Vidor had come out by bicycle, to see they were all right and assure Ben that Able Seamen Bright and Farr – in the Lannilis café, two floors up from the bar-room where the customers included off-duty German soldiers – were in reasonably good shape, though restless – which Ben could well imagine – and to talk about the pinpoints, this one and/or
Grac’h Zu. Time was getting short now, only a few days’ life left in this moon.

  He’d been back about a week – six days, maybe – from the abortive Bordeaux trip, and had made it back just in time to be present at the joint funeral of Solange’s father and the boy, Alain. That had been the last time Ben had seen him. They’d had a brief chat upstairs in Brodard’s bedroom, then from the window Ben had watched them setting off – from out in the yard here, the local doctor with his gazo – an old Buick, charcoal-burning – and three cousins from some other village – Solange’s closest relations, the sister having stayed away – all of them in black, climbing back into the crocked-up old limousine as Vidor emerged from the house with Solange on his arm, and from a mile away the Broennou church bell tolled sonorously across the fields and the salt-swept coast. Ben had sworn to himself he’d paint the scene, one day. The church would be only a grey spiked fragment in the background, but he’d do his damnedest to make anyone who looked at it hear that bell.

  The entire village had been present, Solange had told him that evening. But not the sister, the one person she’d really wanted. There’d been some awful row between her and her father a few years ago, apparently, when she’d left the place; Ben suspected – from some remark of Vidor’s – that it had involved a pregnancy.

  Vidor said, ‘It has to be munitions caches they’re looking for.’

  ‘How would you guess they’d have known there were any?’

  ‘Oh… Well – when our friend Guillaume was taken, was when it started – or soon after—’

  ‘Christ, yes – I’d forgotten—’

  ‘I’m not saying he told them anything. Far from it. I’d guess if anyone could keep his trap shut, he could – and would. But he had explosive, and he was on that train…’

  The same one they’d put Rosie on, Ben remembered. How’d you forget that, for God’s sake? Vidor added, ‘He’d got on it at Landerneau, couldn’t lie about that either, they’d see his ticket… Ben, you’re doing a good job here. Good for this one not to be alone, too. Eh?’