by Pierre Frei
'Votre passeport, s'il vows plait.' Marlene woke with a start. It was early morning. A French passport inspector was in the compartment, a German military policeman behind him. My name is Neumann, went the words in her head, Helene Neumann ...
The French official leafed through Professor Raab's work of art. The military policeman read it over his shoulder. 'Where to?' he asked.
'Paris.'
'What for?'
She took the letter from the Party leadership out of her handbag. The military policeman read it. He obviously didn't understand a word. 'Thanks, all in order.' He gave her the letter back.
'Bon voyage, mademoiselle.' The passport inspector handed her papers back and turned to the next passenger.
A French steam engine had taken over from the Swiss electric locomotive and puffed away fast, staccato, until its flywheels took hold and the train slowly moved away.
The Gare de Lyon was a peaceful scene, one that a few German soldiers lounging about could not disturb. Passengers in a hurry. Porters bustling about. Brightly coloured kiosks. A man playing the accordion. A dog lifting its leg against the advertising pillar bearing the Picon ad. And hovering over everything its own particular mixture of smells, a compound of soot, cheap perfume, Gitanes and pastis. Marlene breathed it all in. No different from Lehrter station, just not the same, she thought with her best Riibenstrasse logic.
Bicycle taxis were waiting outside the station. Gasoline was in short supply. Marlene put her case in one of these vehicles. 'To the Louvre, please.' She enjoyed the swaying ride through the city, little damaged by a few weeks of war and twelve months of ceasefire. 'Attendez,' she asked the cabby when they reached her destination.
Outside the Louvre a group of German officers had gathered around a tourist guide who was explaining something in terrible German. 'Mon dieu, non, c'est intolerable. Parlez francais, s'il vows plait.' a captain told the guide in fluent French.
A major left the group and came over to Marlene. She put her case down to get her papers out of her handbag. I expect they check up on you here even if you want to go to the loo, she thought crossly.
'Vous permettez, madame?' The major was after her case, not her passport. 'Ou puis je vous la porter?'
'Up there, please.' She indicated the steps up to the entrance.
'You're German?'
'You can hear I am.'
'Visiting the Louvre?'
'You can see I am.' A German officer was the last thing she needed just now.
He was not to be shaken off so easily. 'Major Achim Wachter, if I may introduce myself. Perhaps we could see each other again?' He was about forty and had some grey in his hair. He was sizing her up.
Now he's wondering out how easy it would be to get me into bed, she thought. 'Thank you for carrying my case.' She left him standing there and turned to the museum attendant in the entrance. 'Je cherche Monsieur Aristide Brunel.'
'Vous etes la dame allemande?'
Any objection?'
'Allons.' The man went ahead of her. A small side door. A narrow passage. A spiral staircase. A long corridor. Tall double doors. An imposing desk. A white-haired man in a dark, double-breasted suit. 'La dame allemande, Monsieur le directeur.'
'Our visitor from Munich.' The white-haired man spoke German. 'From the Alte Pinakothek, am I right? The restorer? Bonjour, madame.'
'I don't have anything to do with restaurants. I'm to ask if you've been able to tell the difference between the two Canalettos yet.'
Brunel's face brightened. 'How is my friend Georg Raab?' he asked, delighted.
In a terrible way. And as long as he's in a terrible way he's all right because he's still alive. But don't ask me for how much longer.'
'Is it that bad?'
'Worse.'
'What about you, madame?'
'I managed to get away. With his help. He says you'll find a safe place for me to stay.'
Brunel made a call, speaking quietly and fast. Marlene couldn't make out a word. He hung up. You were never here, and we'll never see each other again. In the unlikely event of a chance meeting we don't know each other.'
'I understand. So now?'
'Go downstairs, and the rest will follow.' He kissed her hand. 'Bonne chance, ma chere.' He escorted her to the top of the spiral staircase.
The group of German officers had disappeared. The bicycle taxi was waiting at the foot of the broad flight of steps. Marlene stopped short. It wasn't the same cabby, but a dark man with a moustache, who silently indicated that she should get in.
Jerkily, they set off. They rode fast through the city: Marlene had no idea for how long or where to. The cyclist had to tread hard on the pedals as they went uphill. 'Montmartre,' he told her, out of breath. Next moment they were coasting downhill again towards an entrance. BERTRAND'S VELOTAXIS, she read over the gate as it clanged shut behind them. There was darkness all around.
So now what, she thought, more baffled than alarmed.
' Votre nom?' said a voice in the darkness.
'Helene Neumann.'
'Votre vrai nom.'
'Look, I don't understand. My French is strictly limited, if you know what I mean.'
'We want your real name,' the voice demanded.
'Let's have a bit of light in here first so that I can see you.'
A quiet murmuring, then a pause, and the creak of shutters. Light dazzled her, and traced the outlines of three people. She raised a hand to shield her eyes. She recognized the man with the moustache. A young woman stood beside him, wearing a brightly coloured summer dress and fashionable wedge heels. Her long black hair was caught up and turned under in a roll. She was sizing Marlene up.
'We want to know who you are, what your real name is and where you come from.' The speaker was a tall, dark man of around thirty with a craggy chin. His German was fluent. Marlene, whose own native Berlin accent was returning to her, thought she heard the trace of a dialect that she didn't recognize.
'Why do you want to know all this?'
'farce que vows etes allemande et les allemande sont nos ennemis,' said the young woman sharply.
'Very well, if you must know, my name's Marlene Neubert. I've come from Blumenau camp near Berlin. A friend of your friend Monsieur Brunel helped me get out with forged papers. The papers say my name is Helene Neumann and I'm in Paris to find a suitable building for the Nazi Women's Association. Here's my passport, and a letter from Party leadership - that's a fake too.' She handed the papers to the speaker. 'So now maybe you'd be kind enough to introduce yourselves.'
'My name is Armand, this is Yvonne, and this is Bertrand.'
'Nos noms de guerre,' the woman added.
And you'll be Madeleine from now on,' Armand told her. 'We're all on first-name terms here. What happens if the Germans check up on you?'
'Nothing at first. But if I'm identified back in Berlin I'm done for. They'll kill me or send me to Theresienstadt, which comes to the same thing. Any more questions?'
'Yes. Are you prepared to help us fight the Germans?'
'The Germans, no. The SS, the Gestapo and the Nazis, yes.'
'C'est la meme chose,' said Yvonne, her voice filled with scorn.
'You mean I'm the same as that bunch of murderers? No, mademoiselle, you'll have to put that differently.'
'Drop it, Yvonne,' Armand told her. 'Notre nouvelle alliee prend le meme risque que nous. As she can prove in her first operation,' he added thoughtfully. 'Show Madeleine her quarters.'
There was a glasshouse in the overgrown yard, used until recently as an artist's studio, its windows half-covered with linen sheets to give the occupants a little privacy. The artist had gone to Provence. His abstract works were everywhere, and there was a smell of oil paint and turpentine. An unfinished female nude stood on the easel, with breasts at odd angles and an eye instead of a navel. 'What a sight,' Marlene said.
Armand sleeps in the next room. You'll leave him alone, d'accord?'
'Don't you worry. I've had enough of the
lords of creation to last me quite some time.' Marlene inspected the little spirit stove in the kitchen corner and made herself a coffee, ignoring Yvonne, who went off in a huff.
Armand was out almost all the time, returning only to sleep. The other members of the group, about a dozen in all, lived scattered around Paris. Bertrand's Velotaxis gave them freedom of movement and a perfect cover for their Resistance operations. There was a battery-powered transmitter in one of the vehicles, which moved constantly, thereby avoiding German tracking devices. They had it tuned to London, from where orders for the Resistance workers came. Marlene learned all this over the next few days. There was much hectic coming and going, indicating that an operation was about to take place. What role was she to play?
Meanwhile, she was bored. She didn't dare venture out into the streets: she wouldn't have known where to go. The group had no time for her, although Yvonne kept a suspicious eye on her, particularly when Armand came back in the evening.
Men were just about the last thing Marlene had on her mind. Bastards, the whole lot of them, was her summary of her many years of experience. Well, almost all of them. Old Herr Eulenfels had been all right. Frank Saunders too, in his way. She thought of Franz Giese, and suddenly had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. Longing? She didn't know. But she did know one thing, she'd been off her head back then. If you'd said yes you'd be Frau Giese today, and you'd have been spared all that shit, she told herself. Then she realized that she alone would have been spared. Nothing would have been different for Jana, for the little professor, for all the wretches in Blumenau.
On the third day after her arrival a large red Panhard limousine with Paris number-plates drove into the yard. A German officer got out. Marlene was horrified. When she recognized Armand she breathed a sigh of relief. He was in the uniform of a Wehrmacht colonel, and he had brought a German Red Cross nurse's uniform for Marlene.
Marlene wrinkled her nose. 'Stinks to high heaven.'
Armand laughed. Our Maghrebi tailor finds inspiration in garlic when he's copying German uniforms.'
Their orders had come from London. The Germans had shot down an RAF plane on a reconnaissance flight. The pilot and his observer had parachuted to safety and were taken prisoner.
'We're not interested in the pilot,' Armand told her. 'It's the other man we want. Lieutenant-Colonel Colby is the RAF's chief strategist. He knows all the bomber targets from Bordeaux to Berlin. He broke his arm coming down, and now he's in the German officers' hospital in Neuilly. The Gestapo have got wind of their patient's identity, and they've sent him Edelgard in the role of a nurse.'
'Edelgard?'
'Edelgard Bornheim is a trained psychologist. She likes to think she can make anyone talk. She was transferred to Gestapo headquarters in Paris because of her perfect French, and her English is just as good. A dangerous opponent. She'll use any means she can. She can be sympathetic, understanding, sweet as sugar. If it serves her ends she'll sleep with her victim, whether it's a man or a woman. She'll try to win Colby's confidence, and we have to get him out of there as fast as possible. Here, take this, just to be on the safe side.' He gave Marlene a small pistol. A 6.35 Beretta. Deadly at close quarters. If you have to use it on yourself, the best way is to put it in your mouth and pull the trigger. It won't hurt. Come on, Bertrand will drive us.'
Bertrand was wearing black chauffeur's livery and a peaked cap. A German officer in a French limousine with a French driver?' she wondered aloud.
All part of our camouflage. Get in, Nurse Magda,' Armand told her.
'How do you come to speak such good German?' she asked as they drove through the streets of Paris.
'I'm from Alsace. I first saw the light of day as a subject of His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II, but I grew up as a citizen of the Republique. My heart belongs to France. Now I'm German again and due to be called up. If they catch me they'll shoot me as a deserter.'
'In such a case the best way is to put your pistol in your mouth and pull the trigger. It won't hurt,' said Marlene, unimpressed.
The German officers' hospital was housed in a large villa in Neuilly park, dating from the time of Napoleon III. An ornate gateway led to an inner courtyard. 'If they close the gate we won't never get out,' said Marlene, her accent reverting to her Berlin roots.
'Pick up the raincoat and follow me, Nurse Magda,' Armand cut her short. A lance-corporal orderly jumped to his feet and saluted. 'I'm Colonel Klemens. Who's in charge here?'
'Medical Officer Fahrenkamp.'
'Take us to him.'
'Yessir.' The lance-corporal hurried ahead, brushing past several nurses, and flung open a double door. 'Colonel Klemens, Dr Fahrenkamp, sir,' he announced.
And this is Nurse Magda. She'll be looking after our patient,' Armand introduced her.
'Colonel, Nurse Magda ...' The medical officer clicked his heels. 'Which patient do you mean?'
'Haven't you recived a telex from the Fiihrer headquarters, then? I don't believe it! Well, we can go into this bungling incompetence later. Now let's get the Englishman ready to travel.'
'Lieutenant-Colonel Colby?'
Armand lowered his voice. 'This is secret state business. Colby is a close relation of the British royal family. We have orders to take him to Schloss Siidmaringen, the internment camp for VIPs. It could be that we'll exchange him for Hess, but remember, you never heard that.'
Of course not, colonel.' The medical officer sniffed in surprise.
Armand grinned. 'You'll have to forgive us, Dr Fahrenkamp. Nurse Magda and I were dining on snails with garlic butter last night. Now, back to business. We mustn't attract any attention in moving the patient. Hence my French car and its French chauffeur. We've brought a raincoat with us, for Nurse Magda to put over his uniform.'
'Can I see my patient now, please?' Marlene was very much the energetic nurse.
'Lance-Corporal Fink, take Nurse Magda to our prisoner. May I offer you an Armagnac meanwhile, colonel?'
'No thank you, there's no time. Hurry up, will you, nurse? The Luftwaffe won't keep that plane waiting for ever.'
The lance-corporal led Marlene to a bright, pleasant room. A thin man in a khaki shirt and braces rose from the edge of the bed, and reached for his uniform jacket. 'You must excuse me. I didn't expect visitors.'
'I'm Nurse Magda. Let me help you.' She helped him to fit his right arm into its sleeve, and draped the jacket over his left shoulder so that his arm in its plaster rested comfortably in the sling. 'We're going to get you out of here. Please trust us,' she said in a low voice. And now your raincoat.' She was about to put the raincoat round him when the door opened.
Here comes trouble, she thought.
The woman who entered the room was good-looking, around thirty. She wore a stylish, blue tailored suit and a starched nurse's cap. 'I see our patient has a visitor,' she said, smiling. 'I'm Nurse Edelgard. How do you do?'
'Nurse Magda,' Marlene introduced herself.
'Glad to meet you, nurse.' Edelgard offered her hand with natural friendliness. Are you new here?'
'We've come to collect the prisoner. He's being transferred to Schloss Sudmaringen.'
Armand came in. 'Colonel Klemens,' he introduced himself.
'How do you do, Colonel,' the Englishman replied formally, and winced. He was clearly in pain.
'Nurse Magda has painkillers in her bag. She'll see to your arm on the way,' Armand told him.
A fracture of the femur,' said Nurse Edelgard. It will soon heal. Let me make you a cup of tea before you go.' She opened the door of a cubby hole, where a gas boiler and kettle stood on a table - as well as a field telephone with a line leading out through the open window.
'Draughts won't do our patient any good.' Marlene closed the window.
Edelgard was filling the kettle at the sink. 'They say Siidmaringen is a very pretty place. How nice for you, lieutenant-colonel. Tea will be ready in a moment.' She was about to close the door of the cubby hole behind her.
Armand's rig
ht hook came quick as lightning. With a sigh, Nurse Edelgard collapsed on the floor. 'She was only going to make tea,' said Marlene reproachfully.
'She was going to raise the alarm.' Armand closed the door of the tiny room and pocketed the key. 'The femur is the thigh bone. Any real nurse would know that. The phone is connected to Gestapo HQ.'
'Was connected,' Marlene said, showing him the two ends of the telephone wire that she had broken as she closed the window. A temporary field connection like that isn't very stable, someone once told me.'
'Jolly good show,' said the Englishman appreciatively.
And now to get out inconspicuously.' Marlene put the raincoat round his shoulders and led him out of the room. Armand brought up the rear. On the stairs, the medical officer joined them and accompanied them to the car. All the best, lieutenant-colonel,' he said to Colby.
'Thank you, doctor.' The red Panhard started up. Colby turned to Armand. 'Now what?'
'You'll be back in London in a couple of days' time.'
They stopped in the middle of Neuilly park, behind some dense bushes. Bertrand put two fingers to his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. Two bicycle taxis raced over the grass. Armand left his cap and uniform jacket in the car, Marlene added her nurse's cap to them. She helped the Englishman into one of the vehicles and squeezed in beside him. The rider stepped on the pedals. 'I like your Resistance. It's fun,' she called, in high spirits.