Realising that he was vulnerable approaching the house from the road, Paul cut through the bushes behind and moved stealthily towards the back of the shed where they’d stored the bikes. He jolted with fright as something touched his hand, but he spun around and after a moment’s panic saw that it was nothing but a red drip from the cuff of his blood-soaked shirt.
He peered around the side of the shed and saw a classic stand-off: Boo had her Sten gun pointed at a perspiring bald-headed Gestapo officer, and the officer had his MP-40 pointing at her. With his hearing screwed, it felt like a scene in a silent movie that was about to cut to a title card that said No way! Why don’t YOU put YOUR gun down?
Paul couldn’t afford to miss, but the German was less than four metres away. You normally aimed for the chest because it was the biggest target, but the Gestapo officer was sideways on so he aimed for the ear.
He felt a little sick. Nerves and blood loss caused part of it, but mainly it was the sense of taking another life. Paul was a sensitive soul and knew he’d remember that sweat-streaked head if he lived to a hundred. But he had to pull the trigger and he did.
The Gestapo officer’s head exploded. His body stayed upright for several seconds, during which Boo rolled over on to her belly and pumped out a couple of shots to finish off the German lying in the road.
‘Are you OK?’ Paul asked, as he gave Boo a hand up.
The back of Boo’s dress was bloody and torn where the debris had pelted her. Her right arm and leg were badly grazed.
‘I’ll survive,’ Boo said, as she looked at the buckled wheel of her bike. ‘Can’t hear a damned thing though.’
‘Me neither,’ Paul shouted, as he staggered into the shed and pulled out the third bike. ‘Someone will have heard the explosions. We need to ride out of here fast.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Oberst Bauer was due on duty in less than an hour. He came to his front door dressed in his trousers and freshly polished boots, but with only the straps of his braces over his muscular chest.
‘I have a message for Oberst Krauss,’ Luc said, trying to sound official, although he was far too scruffy to be a messenger boy.
Bauer looked contemptuously at the folded sheet of paper in Luc’s hand. ‘There is no Krauss here. You either have the wrong name or the wrong address.’
‘Are you sure there’s nobody else in there?’ Luc asked.
‘Give me that,’ Bauer said impatiently, as he snatched the piece of paper.
His eyebrows shot up as he read the message: Oberst Bauer wears lady’s knickers.
‘Who put you up to this?’ Bauer shouted, as Luc backed away. ‘Do you know how powerful I am? I could make you disappear like that.’
To make his point, Bauer clicked his fingers. The click coincided with Henderson jumping out of a bush. He grabbed the much larger Bauer around the neck and held a pad soaked in chloroform across his nose and mouth.
Luc caught a powerful kick in the thigh, but Henderson won his battle to keep the mask in place. As the Gestapo officer struggled, he grabbed him under the arms and dragged him into the hallway.
‘Door,’ Henderson shouted.
Luc looked back into the square to make sure nobody had seen what had happened before limping inside and slamming the front door.
‘Grab his ankles, he weighs a bloody ton.’
Henderson walked backwards into a large living room and they threw the semiconscious body on to a sofa.
‘You didn’t give him enough,’ Luc said.
‘I want him to come round as quickly as possible,’ Henderson explained. ‘Check every room, make sure we’re alone.’
As Luc rushed out, Henderson pulled the curtains in the bay window overlooking the street. The house was tastefully decorated and Henderson saw a gold menorah candlestick over the mantelpiece, indicating that the original owners had been Jewish.
‘Nothing,’ Luc said, as he came back through the arched doorway. ‘There are four bedrooms upstairs. One looks like Bauer’s, one seems to be a guest room. The other two are kids’ rooms, but they’re dusty. Nobody’s been in there in months.’
‘Perfect,’ Henderson said, as he rested his leather document case on a compact piano, pulled out a false bottom and removed a separate zipped pouch containing syringes and pill bottles. ‘Help me turn Bauer on to his back. Then I want you to search the house for documents or anything else that looks useful. Don’t make a mess, his death has to look natural.’
‘Loud and clear, boss,’ Luc said.
As he waited for Bauer to regain consciousness, Henderson saw a decanter on a side table. Being careful not to leave fingerprints, he put a handkerchief over his hand before removing the stopper and getting a sniff of expensive brandy. He poured a large measure into a cognac glass and knocked it back in two gulps. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind, Herr Oberst.’
Bauer made a low groan as Henderson walked back towards him. Henderson pulled the German’s eye open. His pupil shrank rapidly in response to the bright sunlight, which meant he’d almost regained consciousness. Within a minute or two, he’d be capable of getting up and starting a fight.
Henderson sat on the low table in front of the sofa and pulled a large needle out of the medical case. It was about the length of a pen, made from stainless steel, with a hook at the blunt end so that you could get hold to pull it out.
After feeling along Bauer’s spine to find the gap between two vertebrae, Henderson marked the spot with his thumbnail, carefully aligned the needle and then punched it into the gap between the bones with a hard slap. Bauer’s eyes shot open and he screamed out in pain. The resulting adrenaline rush more than cancelled the lingering effects of chloroform.
‘Welcome back,’ Henderson said in German, as he crouched down near the arm of the couch so that Bauer could see him. He then gave the needle the gentlest of nudges to make Bauer scream again. ‘You have a needle wedged between two vertebrae in close proximity to your spinal column. I assume you’re familiar with this technique?’
‘You shit,’ Bauer said, trying to move but finding that even the tiniest movement shifted the needle and caused excruciating pain.
‘You certainly ought to be familiar,’ Henderson said, ignoring Bauer. ‘German intelligence invented the technique during the last war. It’s not effective for lengthy interrogations because there’s a serious risk of blackout or instant paralysis, but it leaves no obvious marks and there’s only one question that I need answered.’
Luc came back into the room and laughed at Bauer’s suffering. ‘Nice! Can I give the needle a wiggle?’
For the first time that day, Henderson found Luc irritating. ‘What did you find upstairs?’ he asked tersely.
‘I looked through his papers, there’s a bit of stuff in his desk.’
‘We’ve got time. Take the camera and photograph anything that looks interesting.’
‘I’ll try, but I can’t read much German,’ Luc said.
‘Keep an eye out for any names you recognise. Especially Brigitte Mercier or Marc Hortefeux.’
As Luc headed back upstairs, Henderson turned to Bauer.
‘We’re both professionals,’ Henderson said, trying to sound friendly. ‘You understand how this works. I’m undercover in occupied territory and you know my identity, so I’ll have no option but to kill you when this interrogation is over. The only question is whether you choose to spend hours or minutes in agonising pain before you die. So, where is Marc?’
Bauer looked determined and smiled slightly. ‘You won’t find him, Mr Hortefeux.’
Henderson gave the needle sticking out of Bauer’s back a slight upwards push. The big German’s legs jerked involuntarily as Henderson pushed Bauer’s face down into the sofa cushions to muffle his scream.
‘And why won’t I find him?’
‘His heart gave out,’ Bauer said. ‘I had your son impaled on a hot spike. He died, moaning like a little bitch.’
Henderson flashed with anger, but tried not to lose his cool. There
was a strong possibility that Bauer was lying.
‘What did Marc tell you?’
Bauer smiled. ‘He told me that his father was a Jew-loving, homosexual communist. You should have heard his boyish screams when I broke his arms, Hortefeux.’
‘You’d better be lying,’ Henderson said angrily. ‘Because if you’re not, I’ll hunt down your family. Wife, kids, whatever.’
Bauer shook his head by as much as he dared do without moving the needle wedged into his spine.
‘The war is almost over, Hortefeux. Russia’s practically finished, Britain won’t hold out for long and scum like you will be captured and killed.’
Henderson swept his hand across angrily, knocking the needle. Bauer wailed, and Henderson had to stand and force Bauer’s head down into the cushions for almost a minute before he calmed down.
‘I can do that again so easily,’ Henderson warned.
‘Do it then,’ Bauer said. ‘Your brat will still be dead.’
Luc came into the room holding a sheath of papers. I’ve no idea what it says, but it’s Marc’s picture at the top.’
Henderson snatched the papers eagerly. He felt sad as he saw the blurry black and white photo of a tired-looking Marc. Was that the last picture ever taken of him?
The papers didn’t give much away except times and dates. The time of Marc’s arrest and his first interrogation. His intended release the following morning was written on the paper, but crossed through. Then there was the time of Marc’s second interrogation and the words, confession on file, 12-month sentence. The final entry was a single word: Rennes.
Henderson turned towards Bauer. ‘Is Marc being held in Rennes?’
‘He’s dead,’ Bauer said firmly. ‘I already told you what happened.’
Henderson waggled the paper. ‘It doesn’t say that here.’
‘I didn’t mean to kill Marc,’ Bauer explained. ‘At least not until I’d got a lot more out of him, and some of my superiors are surprisingly squeamish. They don’t like it when someone dies accidentally, especially a kid, so I covered my tracks.
‘I didn’t want Marc buried in Lorient, in case word somehow got back to you, so we sent his body to Rennes prison. The paperwork says he was alive when he left Lorient. At Rennes you’ll find another set of papers saying he was transferred to Germany for labour duty, but that’s just to cover my tracks. The fact is, Mr Hortefeux, I tortured your precious son to death and enjoyed doing it.’
‘Bastard,’ Henderson shouted, giving in to emotion as he grabbed the needle and yanked it sideways.
Bauer screamed for about two seconds before his entire body locked stiff.
‘Is he dead?’ Luc asked.
‘Blacked out,’ Henderson said, as he took a vial of smelling-salts from the pouch and held them under Bauer’s nostrils.
‘He could be lying about Marc just to piss you off,’ Luc said, as Bauer’s eyes flickered open. ‘If Marc was tortured he can’t have given much away or he would have had you arrested, or followed at the very least.’
‘Call the commandant at Rennes prison if you don’t believe me,’ Bauer said, springing back to life as suddenly as he’d blacked out. ‘There’s a phone in my hallway. Tell him you’re from the Gestapo at Lorient. Say that you want to bring Marc back for further interrogation and see what he tells you.’
Henderson picked up the phone by the front door and was surprised to hear the operator speaking in German. He hadn’t realised that military lines were connected to a separate desk at the telephone exchange.
‘Rennes, the prison commandant please.’
‘I’ll have to look that number up,’ the operator said.
She took a couple of minutes to find the number. Henderson got the commandant’s secretary, then the commandant himself.
‘This is Oberlieutenant Schmidt at Lorient Gestapo HQ,’ Henderson said in German-accented French. ‘I’m enquiring about a prisoner named Marc Hortefeux. We may need to bring him back to Lorient to speak with him in the next day or two.’
The phone connection was crackly, but Henderson thought the commandant sounded nervous.
‘Hortefeux is in transit to a labour camp in Germany,’ the commandant said.
‘Why would that be?’ Henderson asked. ‘He’s too young for labour service, isn’t he?’
Now the commandant sounded upset. ‘I stand by my actions and if you wish to place me under formal investigation, so be it. Good day to you, sir.’
With that, the commandant slammed down his phone.
Henderson had no way of knowing that the commandant had sent Marc to Germany because he thought it would be better for him, or that the commandant was frightened because Bauer had gone bananas and threatened to arrest him when he’d discovered that Marc had been shipped off to Germany without his permission. Henderson simply assumed that Bauer’s story was true and the commandant was complicit in covering up Marc’s death.
‘So, was I lying?’ Bauer asked, sounding remarkably chipper for a man facing death.
Henderson didn’t answer because he was choking back tears.
Luc gawped. ‘Marc’s really dead?’
‘It seems so,’ Henderson sniffed, as he took a small glass vial and a syringe from his leather pouch. His hands trembled as he pushed the needle through the bottle’s foil cap and drew the liquid into the syringe.
‘What’s that?’ Luc asked.
‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Henderson said. ‘They extract it from some Indian frog. It stops the heart dead and looks like a heart attack when you do an autopsy.’
‘Can I do it?’ Luc asked. ‘I want to get one Nazi in the bag to avenge my brother.’
‘If you wish,’ Henderson said coldly. ‘Put it somewhere hairy so you can’t see the injection site.’
‘One more thing,’ Bauer said, as Luc leaned over to deliver the fatal injection.
‘What?’ Henderson asked.
‘When your son was dying,’ Bauer said, ‘I held his face against a hotplate, just because I could.’
‘Kill him now,’ Henderson said angrily as he stepped back in disgust.
Bauer was pretty hairy all over, but Luc found a good spot near the Gestapo officer’s armpit and pushed the needle through his skin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A girl riding in broad daylight with a machine gun slung over her shoulder was suspicious, so Rosie abandoned the motorbike after three kilometres and began a nervy walk towards the safe house, avoiding villages by sticking to the back country and taking cover whenever she saw anyone.
She’d last seen Paul and Boo heading into scrubland pursued by four Germans. She spent most of the walk wondering if they’d got away, while torturing herself over whether she should have gone in the same direction and tried to help them.
It was nearly six when Rosie approached the safe house. Her skin was glazed with sweat and it felt like every insect in France had taken a bite at her arms and legs. If Paul and Boo had been captured there was a chance they’d have given away the location of the safe house under interrogation, so she crouched in the bushes for several minutes looking for signs of life, then crept up to the kitchen window with the German machine gun poised.
When Rosie bobbed up, she saw Paul sitting shirtless on the kitchen floor, with a bandage around his upper arm and the huge scars across his back where he’d been hit by debris when their boat went down the previous year.
Rather than shout, Rosie rapped one knuckle on the glass to attract Paul’s attention. This way he could signal if something was wrong.
‘Hey!’ Paul said, jumping to his feet and smiling.
They met on the front doorstep and pulled each other into a relieved hug. The death of their parents and the stresses of war had forged an exceptionally close bond between the two siblings and they both began to well up.
‘I was so scared they’d got you,’ Rosie said, as Boo came around the bottom of the stairs and joined the hugs.
They swapped their escape stories as Ro
sie took off her dress and washed down with cold water and a flannel. But they’d killed five Germans, including three Gestapo officers, between them so it was no time for chitchat.
‘We have to split up,’ Boo began. ‘All the Germans who saw us are dead, but when they question the villagers they’ll get a good enough description of us.’
‘Agreed,’ Rosie said. ‘They’ll be hunting for two girls and a boy. Did either of you leave your identity documents, or anything else around?’
‘My ration card was in the house,’ Paul said. ‘I didn’t have it on me because I only went up the hill as a lookout.’
‘You should have kept it with you, really,’ Boo said. ‘But it doesn’t have your photo so it’s not all that important.
‘I’ve had a look at the supplies and equipment in the rooms upstairs,’ Boo went on. ‘There’s a lot of options for us, in terms of clothing, documentation and suchlike. I’d suggest that two of us make up the fake American passports and head south. It’ll be hairy until we get out of the Lorient zone, but the Germans treat all Yanks with kid-gloves. The third person needs to go into town and warn Henderson.’
‘Getting into town might be risky,’ Paul said. ‘But I’ve never seen a checkpoint between here and Kerneval. It’s probably better to warn someone at the fishing village, and they can pass the message on indirectly.’
Boo considered this for a couple of seconds. ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘That does make more sense. Joel will be able to pass the message on to Henderson on his way to work in the morning. There’s a spare radio set here if they need to send an emergency signal.’
Paul laughed, ‘Though if they’re relying on Troy’s or Luc’s Morse code skills for transmission, God help them.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Rosie said, tapping a thoughtful finger on her cheek. ‘Why are we so sure that the Germans weren’t tipped off? For all we know, Henderson and the others were arrested before us and gave our position away.’
‘No,’ Paul said, shaking his head. ‘First off, Henderson only knew our approximate location and he’d be the last person to break under interrogation. Second, I watched the Germans driving towards us like lunatics, with the aerial sticking out the side of the car tracking our signal. If they’d been tipped off, they would have waited until we were off guard and encircled the house.’
Henderson's Boys: Grey Wolves Page 23