The Best of Our Spies

by Alex Gerlis

  The older man leaned over to her, offering his hand. ‘Pierre.’ ‘Geraldine,’ she replied.

  The others introduced themselves. ‘Françoise’, the woman who had brought her over to the copse. ‘Lucien’, the older man, and ‘Jean’, the younger one with the dark hair flopping down his face and the smile.

  ‘We wait here for a while. It is a very clear night. If the Germans head this way we will soon hear them.’

  And so they sat in silence. There was a rustle in a field on the other side of the track, causing Geraldine to turn sharply.

  ‘Germans?’ she whispered.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Pierre. ‘Just cows.’

  ‘Same thing,’ said Jean. Nervous smiles and more silence.

  ‘Do you have your pistol?’ asked Pierre.

  Geraldine got out her Webley, struggling to pull it out of her jacket pocket. Pierre nodded, with a quizzical look on his face. ‘You prefer it? That’s good.’

  After what was probably only ten minutes but seemed much longer, Pierre sent Jean and Françoise out in different directions to check all was clear. When they came back, Pierre spoke in a dialect she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Asteur.’

  He made an apologetic gesture towards her with his hand.

  ‘Sorry. I was saying now. We use the local patois here a lot. The Germans don’t understand it, so it is a useful habit to have. We leave here one by one, at five minute intervals. Apart from you. You will go with Jean. You will be staying at his father’s house. Lucien will come back with Jean tomorrow to collect the canisters. You stay in the house all day tomorrow. I will call by at some stage. I will have more papers for you then.’

  They moved off into the night, like bats darting silently in different directions. She and Jean were the last to leave. When they moved out of the wood into the field, she could see him clearly in the moonlight. He was barely a man, probably not yet out of his teens, but he moved with a confidence and experience of one much older. He guided her with an arm round her waist to the side of the field and under the cover of first the hedge and then trees they walked for a good fifteen minutes. They crossed two roads, sat silently while dogs in an unseen farmyard reluctantly stopped barking and then climbed over a stile. Ahead of them she could just begin to make out the silhouette of the village. They edged down a gentle hill, hopped over a small river and landed on the springy grass on the other side. They were now just yards from the back of a row of a dozen cottages, with not a flicker of light in any of them. To their right the dark shape of a church was picked out against the sky. It was two in the morning. An owl hooted and she thought she heard the sound of a vehicle moving away on a distant road. A line of tall trees towered above the cottages, the tops of them gently swaying in a strange unison

  They waited while she caught her breath. Suddenly she heard a dramatic screech ahead of her, like a cat screaming out, four times in a row. A pause, then three more times. She jumped and Jean placed a reassuring hand on her thigh. He leaned close to her and whispered.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s the peacocks. They live in the chateau. You’ll have to get used to them.’ He pointed ahead of him. ‘The second house on the left is my father’s. I will go first. When I have been in for one minute, I will send a signal with my torch, one short flash, two long ones. That means it is clear. Come to the house then. The back door will be open. If you see no signal from me after three minutes you will have to go back the way we came as quickly as possible. When you come to the second road we crossed, follow it into Boulogne. Hide when you get to the town then go to the station when it is busy and ask for Lucien. You saw him tonight. But be careful, Boulogne is full of Germans. Everywhere.’

  Within a couple of minutes she had entered through the tiny kitchen of the little house. Jean was already in the small hall, pointing up the stairs. He took her into a tiny bedroom, checking that the curtains were shut. There appeared to be just one other bedroom.

  ‘This will be your room. It used to be mine. I will get you a drink. Are you hungry?’

  ‘No, I am fine. A drink would be good though. Where is your father?’

  ‘Germany. Compulsory Work Service. Thousands of men from this region have gone, like slaves. My father is an electrician. They need people like him in their factories.’

  ‘How long has he been gone?’

  ‘Two years now, nearly. He writes every week. It is much harder for him.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She died when I was eleven.’ Jean smiled, not wanting her to feel embarrassed. She realised she was probably asking too many questions, but she had one more.

  ‘How old are you, Jean?’

  ‘Eighteen, but I am nineteen on the sixth of June.’

  As she lay down in bed she did not expect to sleep that night. Her body was exhausted, but her mind was everywhere. She had failed to dispose of Nathalie over the Channel; part of her last identity remained stuck inside her, which meant that Owen did too. She tried to stay awake, fearful that she would call out his name, but drifted into an uneasy sleep which only became a deep one after Owen told her not to worry, that he understood. She was woken just after seven as Jean tapped on her door and asked her to come down. Pierre had arrived. She dressed quickly and went into the small front room, which the front door opened straight into, shielded by a curtain. The room was sparse, more utilitarian than comfortable. The dark wooden floor was covered by two frayed rugs, which overlapped. An oak table with six chairs around it was the main feature of the room. There was a battered armchair in front of the fireplace. The mantelpiece held a few photographs: the young Jean; the young Jean and his parents and a beautiful woman in her thirties. She presumed this was his mother. Like most of the surfaces in the room, they needed dusting. The other side wall of the room, opposite the mantelpiece, was dominated by a large gilded mirror. Some of the mirroring had faded away in patches, but the gold coloured frame was ornate, sitting incongruously in the room.

  There was a half empty bottle of Calvados on the table. She noticed it was the proper Calvados, farm produced. She remembered her father making a big fuss about buying some from a farmhouse when they had holidayed not far from here. It was his favourite drink. A sticky glass was beside the bottle, along with two unwashed cups that appeared to have once held coffee. A small sideboard contained a dusty bible and three unopened bottles of red wine and another picture of the beautiful woman.

  Pierre was at the table. She could hear Jean in the kitchen and water boiling.

  ‘It is unusual that you stay here with another member of our group, but the situation has been helpful for us. Last month the Germans checked all the houses in the village and told people who had spare rooms that they must allow workers to stay in them. The bigger houses have Germans billeted with them. So, you are staying here with the approval of the Germans, I suppose.

  ‘I teach at a school in Boulogne. Jean was a student of mine until a year ago. He is a bright boy, he could have continued his studies, but it was too risky for him to stay at school. He now works at a farm on the other side of the village – most of the men in the village work in agriculture, at least they did before the war. It means that the Germans class Jean as essential labour and so he is less likely to be sent to Germany, for the time being. It also gives him good cover to move around the countryside.

  ‘Lucien is a cheminot, a railway worker. He is based at Boulogne-Ville, which is the main station in Boulogne. The railway line passes just south of here. Lucien is married to Françoise, who you also met last night. Françoise is a supervisor at a factory in Boulogne. They assemble electrical equipment like light switches and plugs. Some of it is for the German Army. They are very short of staff, so it was very easy for her to find you work at the factory. You start there on Monday. Françoise was also born in the village. With all the Allied bombing of the town, she and Lucien were worried about the children when she was at work, so now they live with her parents in the village. They are on the other si
de of the church. This was a very small village before the war, but the bombing in Boulogne has been so bad that many people have moved out here. And then we have our guests: the Germans don’t want their troops to be staying in the town either, so we have plenty of them staying here. We need to be careful, of course, but there has been very little resistance activity in this immediate area. We’ve only come together as a cell in the last few weeks. We assume that we were brought together as a cell to help you.

  ‘You have a bicycle and that is how you will travel into the town. It is not safe in Boulogne. The Allies bomb it all of the time. The port is important to the Germans and, of course, it is a big submarine base. You just have to be very careful there.

  ‘Today you can cycle into the town. You will need to register with the authorities and also get your work documents from the factory. Here, I have drawn you a map of where you need to go. Memorise it, don’t take it with you. If you get searched and they find something like this on you, they will find that very rewarding. Your cover is good, you should be all right when you register. It is good that you are from Arras, that was a clever touch by London. The town has been so badly destroyed that it is almost impossible for the Germans to check out someone’s details if they say they are from there. Try to affect a Picardy accent. It’s not easy.’

  Geraldine nodded. The accent was one of the most distinctive in France, so she had to concentrate on subtle differences, like pronouncing the final ‘s’ in a word.

  ‘The Germans will certainly believe your accent,’ said Pierre. ‘But it is not them you need to worry about. I am ashamed to say, it is other French people you need to worry about. Even in this area, too many people have been happy to have an easy life and go along with the occupation. And the collaborators, there are too many of them. The police, local officials. Trust no one, assume nothing. Anyone could be an informer. Say very little and just remember to keep what you say as simple as possible, otherwise you can get caught out by your own detail. Do you understand?’

  She was lost in her thoughts as she realised just how vulnerable she was.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  Geraldine nodded. ‘Sorry. I must still be tired.’

  Pierre spoke with a sense of urgency. Jean had come into the room and placed a large bowl of coffee in front of her and Pierre, along with some bread and jam. Pierre gestured – ‘You must eat. Now. What can you tell us about your mission?’

  She sipped at the scalding coffee, which was better than anything she had tasted in England. ‘The Allies will invade through the Pas de Calais. We do not know when exactly, but it must be in the next two or three months. We will get warning of the invasion. Our main task is to take part in Plan Vert, sabotage of the railway lines. We will plan where to blow them up. The BBC will broadcast the coded messages that will tell us when to do it, but it will be essential if we are to stop German reinforcements coming in to the area once the Allies land. Until then, the orders are to do very little. They don’t want to risk us being caught before D-Day. So we will continue to undertake reconnaissance of the area, plan the exact points where we are going to plant the explosives once we get the message and concentrate on not getting caught.’

  Pierre nodded. He understood. He stood up to leave, drinking the last of his coffee before he did so.

  ‘Jean will leave soon. He will go to work at the farm and Lucien will join him later. They will take a truck from the farm and move the supplies you brought with you to safer locations. We have a house in the village where we can keep the transmitter. Remember this map. You will leave for Boulogne after Jean leaves for work. If you have any trouble when you register with the Germans, you must stick to your story. The paperwork you have is very good and the Germans are not always as efficient as people think they are. Just act normally.’

  And then, as if as a casual afterthought: ‘If they don’t believe you, hold out for as long as possible. That will give us time to disappear. Good luck. I will see you later.’

  After he left, Jean came and joined her at the table. He had opened the curtains fully after Pierre left and the sun was now streaming into the room. As he pulled back the curtains he had released a cloud of fine dust.

  Jean smiled at her as he ate his breakfast. His eyes were jet black, like hers, and when he smiled, he had a perfect set of white teeth. He looked uncannily like the woman in the photograph. ‘You don’t wear your glasses all the time?’

  Geraldine realised that she had forgotten to put them on. She had also forgotten to tie back her hair. From the way Jean could not take his eyes off her, she clearly did not look as plain as she did when she left England. She realised that in her haste to dress when Pierre had arrived, the top three buttons of her shirt were undone and Jean was trying hard not to stare at her. His own shirt was open to halfway down his chest. Any Germans bursting in now would assume they were lovers enjoying a drink and that unspoken intimacy that comes after making love.

  ‘I will return around six this evening. The curfew starts at eight o’clock. I will bring food from the farm for us to eat. Usually I eat with the Gironds next door, but I told them I now have a lodger. Don’t worry, people know better than to ask too many questions around here these days. Enjoy your day in Boulogne.’

  ooo000ooo

  She was surprised at how badly damaged Boulogne was. She knew that there had been air raids and it made sense that the RAF would be attacking the area ahead of the invasion, but the scale of the damage still shocked her. Apart from what she had seen in Dunkirk, the France she had left behind four years previously had been the France she had grown up in. But this place was barely recognisable as a town, let alone one in France; buildings spilling onto the pavement and the road, road signs in German as well as French, empty shops, the few civilians that were around looking dishevelled and beaten and German troops everywhere.

  The registration at the Hôtel de Ville in the fortified part of the old town had been easy though it had, inevitably, taken time. All of her papers were in order. She went from one desk to another to get them stamped, then had to go the factory to have another document cleared, before returning to the Hôtel de Ville for her final clearance. At no stage did anyone ask her difficult questions. She was treated with something approaching disdain. What she was unused to was the fact that none of the men who dealt with her gave her a second look. It made her realise that for as long as she could remember, she was accustomed to that lingering stare, the smile held a bit longer than was proper, the eyes following her around a room, the eagerness to help even when it was not required. That had been part of her life for the past ten years and it occurred to her now how much she relied on it. She only realised the extent of it now that it no longer happened. Not for Geraldine Leclerc it didn’t. The thick-framed glasses held together by tape and the uncombed hair pulled back tightly had turned her into one of the anonymous grey characters inhabiting the crowd scenes of life and whom she had always despised. The British, she had to admit, had done a good job with her. No one cared about Geraldine Leclerc, the thirty-year-old factory worker from Arras billeted in a small village outside Boulogne. She was anonymous, someone who would easily fade into the background.

  By now it was twelve noon. Since leaving the village she had worked on the assumption that the resistance would be following her. They had little reason to suspect her; after all, they had seen her climb out of an RAF plane with their own eyes. But at the same time, she knew just how cautious they were. Her communications with Paris had been very limited since she was first approached by the SOE, but one of the messages back from them had been that she should do everything that the resistance asked of her once she arrived in France. It was critical that they suspect nothing of her. The miserable little Belgian had given her a telephone number to memorise. Once she arrived in France and it was safe to call, she was to ring that number.

  Outside the Hôtel de Ville she asked an old man how she could find the post office. He turned his whole body slowly to face
her, allowing his rheumy eyes time to focus on her.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Arras.’

  He looked around. ‘Is Arras as bad as this?’

  ‘Worse.’

  He shook his head. ‘Head down towards the port. The Grande Rue will take you there. Not that they call it that now.’

  She looked at him quizzically. He edged closer to her and lowered his voice. His hand grasped her firmly by the wrist, pulling her nearer to him.

  ‘They now call it Rue Maréchal Pétain.’ He turned round very slowly, checking no one was watching and then very deliberately spat on the pavement.

  His eyes blazed at her. She was finding this tedious, but did what was expected of her and shook her head in a mildly shocked manner.

  The post office was on Quai de la Poste, facing the River Liane. She parked her bike and sat on a nearby bench eating the bread and jam she had brought with her from the house, observing what activity there was around her. She would have spotted any of the people in her cell, but what concerned her was anyone else who may have been following her. If only she could get into the post office without being observed. By the side of the post office was a narrow cobbled lane. A German sentry was posted at the entrance to the lane and only allowing a few people through. If she could get through there, it was unlikely that anyone following her would risk trying to get through too. She waited until a small queue had formed in front of the sentry. A man in a cheap suit approached the sentry.