by Soren Petrek
CHAPTER EIGHT
Over the next few days it became clear to Madeleine and the other trainees still in attendance that they had passed a milestone and that they would indeed be commissioned as field agents. They had been given their false identities and assignments. Now their days were spent sitting in makeshift classrooms and studying technical manuals as they perfected their individual cover stories. Madeleine was to join up with a fledgling Resistance group in the north, taking a job as a postal worker. Her posting would allow her to roam freely and obtain information through observation as she traveled throughout the region. She knew that the north was of special interest as a possible point of invasion. There was somewhat of a stalemate, as Germany couldn’t wrest control of the skies from the RAF. A land invasion without air superiority would be madness. Hitler and his generals knew what that would cost.
Madeleine was listening to an instructor when Captain Teach walked into the room. The instructor paused as Teach pointed to Madeleine and gestured for her to follow him. Madeleine noticed a few of the women watching Teach as he turned and walked out.
Once in the hallway Teach spoke.
“I need to speak to you about additional training, Madeleine.”
“Did I fail to meet the appropriate requirements, Captain?”
“Quite the contrary. You exceeded them all. Although you were not informed, you have been subjected to additional training beyond that of the standard field agent. It was necessary to determine the viability of your candidacy for a mission we must now discuss. I think it would be best to discuss this in my office and not in the hallway. It’s quite important.”
“If I may sir, are we on a first name basis now?”
“Oh, quite right. No, we call all of the trainees by their surnames. It’s just a way to maintain discipline. Think of it as a reward for completing your training.
Teach gave her that huge smile again. The challenge behind his charismatic smile coupled with his startling blue eyes was arresting. Madeleine kicked herself as she realized that she was just standing there staring at him. He seemed even better looking now that the bitter challenge of training was past and the instructors took on a more congenial attitude. Perhaps it was because they knew what the new operatives were in for once they activated and were dropped into occupied territory.
“What assignment will I have, then?”
“That remains to be seen,” Teach said with an air of mystery as they approached his door. He held it open for her as she brushed past him.
“Please sit down,” Teach said, gesturing to a wooden chair facing his desk. The room was Spartan, consisting of a battered old desk, a telephone, and a second chair that didn’t look any more comfortable than the one in which she sat.
“Madeleine, when you came to us you spoke of an assault and your killing of a German officer. I wish I could be more delicate with that information but our jobs simply do not allow for the delicacies of polite discourse. None of the other recruits have killed before. Do you follow me so far?”
“What is it you want of me Captain? If it involves killing Germans, I also want that. I do not want to deliver messages and make coffee for the real soldiers who fight. I am as capable as any.”
“I am relieved to hear you say that Madeleine, because what the SOE is going to ask of you we can not order you to do. Quite frankly, it’s a bit outside of the rules as they currently are.”
“Rules? There are no rules for me. It is against the rules to attack a country and enslave its people without provocation. Now, what is it you want of me?”
“You seem almost eager. When you hear what I have to say, I fear you won’t be quite so ready to jump into the fray.”
“Then just say it,” Madeleine said, firmly returning Teach’s stare.
“We want you to be a killer, Madeleine. You will be an assassin. We need someone in each occupied country to kill the enemy directly. Demoralize the command structure; put the bloody fear of the long reach of the SOE into their guts. Make them look over their shoulders and kill them when they drop their guard. Can you do it?”
“Yes, I can kill for my country. Even though I wear the uniform of the British, I am a soldier of France as certainly as my brother and father before me. I will kill the enemy wherever he is until France is free. After that, I have a restaurant to run.”
“Then you will continue your training, but it is a cold and lonely road you’ll be going down. Your entire purpose will be to kill or, more specifically, to assassinate the enemy. Everyone else thinks the job needs to go to a man. I disagreed. I said the job should go to the most qualified candidate, the most likely to succeed. I went directly to the Prime Minister to argue my case. He was intrigued and authorized the balance of your training. Quite frankly, he was taken with the idea. He laughed and said, “Twas beauty killed the beast.” Aside from the PM and I, everyone expects you to fail.”
“I will not fail.”
“I know you won’t, Madeleine. You have a talent for violence but you need to control it. I know that gender is irrelevant to courage. I think you will be more successful than any man could be. You are a beautiful woman, highly intelligent and resourceful. You will blend in among your countrymen. You are French and won’t have to pretend to be a native. You will be able to move freely into and out of communities under the guise of traveling to meet relatives or for employment. You will have no contact with any Resistance agent or SOE field operative. All of your instructions will come to you and only you from London. You will be permitted to choose your targets as you see fit. You will kill strategically advantageous targets, Gestapo, SS and command officers.”
“When do I start?”
“Immediately.” Teach said, clearly happy with her decision. “You will have only one instructor. I warn you though; he is not like other men. I have met him only once. I frankly don’t believe there’s any humanity left in the man. He’s cold in a way that leaves no mistake as to his abilities. He is a German Jew. A decorated soldier and spy from Germany’s World War One military regime. Germany no longer abides Jews, regardless of their previous contributions to their country. He was rewarded with internment and the disappearance of his wife and children. He believes them to be dead, as do we. We don’t yet know the true extent of, or I should say, the result of the Nazi hatred of the Jews, but I fear we will discover true horror there when this is all said and done. He has spent the last few years revisiting old skills. Numerous high-ranking Nazis have disappeared. At first he did this on his own with no support, but he came to us when the war started. He has been watching you and the others for weeks. He has recommended you, Madeleine.”
Madeleine looked at him and searched his eyes for a glimmer suggesting that he was exaggerating or having a joke with her. He was serious. Madeleine knew what she was being told wasn’t simply idle information. It was a warning, and not made lightly. Clearly she had demonstrated the qualities Teach admired. Another part of her wished that he would see her as a woman. With the new training and assignment she knew that would remain impossible.
“When do I meet this man, Captain?”
“You are to go to a public place of your choosing tomorrow at two pm. He will contact you there.”
“How will he know where I’m going to be?” Madeleine asked, somewhat confused.
“Don’t worry. He’ll know, Madeleine. He’ll know,” Teach said with finality.
Madeleine stood up and left the room. As she walked down the hall she felt a real fear of where she was headed. She couldn’t help but think of the hypocrisy of it all. She was going to be taught to kill Germans by a German. The world had gone completely mad.
The next day Madeleine sat on a park bench in Piccadilly Circus. She loved the excitement and the freedom and bustle of the English, despite the fact that the Luftwaffe might rain bombs down on them at any moment. The Londoners and other city dwellers in Great Britain had suffered so much destruction during Hitler’s Blitz. These were a solid, God-fearing people, stout an
d resolute. She questioned the propriety of the decision to wage an air war against this island nation. The Battle of Britain had been won through the sheer determination of England and her pilots. That, and a plane designed for combat, the Spitfire.
Madeleine kept a wary eye out all around her for the man she was to meet. As her training dictated, she positioned herself so that she could monitor her surroundings. People passed her in every direction. Women hurried by, carrying packages of rationed groceries. People were going about their daily obligations despite the war. Children were rarely seen, as so many of them had been sent to the countryside to avoid the bombing.
Madeleine knew she needed to be vigilant. Maybe he would wait until she left and surprise her from some dark corner. She decided to stay where she was, no matter how long it took. She was at a disadvantage, having no description of the man. Teach had been quite adamant that he would find her.
As the hours dragged on, she spent most of her time thinking about what lay ahead for her. She expected her assignment to be dangerous and involve killing. The Resistance movement was growing rapidly in France; disrupting the German war effort and creating maximum chaos were the two most important goals of the SOE. Winston Churchill’s directive to them was to “set Europe ablaze!” That was clear enough for her.
As the afternoon wore on, Madeleine watched as the traffic thinned out and the people sought the shelter of their homes. There wasn’t much nightlife near her, but she could hear some activity from a small pub tucked around the corner. Blackout conditions were in effect. People accepted the fact that they were at war. It had been thrust upon them in the most personal way. Civilians were bombed as indiscriminately as military targets.
Eventually, the street cleaners came out. Funny how even in the midst of the chaos of war, the orderly and proper life of the British continued. She followed the progress of a lone dustman as he collected rubbish, moving away from where she sat.
“You are patient, I’ll give you that,” a hollow voice said to her. The words lacked any inflection; an icy finger of fear flickered down her spine.
Madeleine whirled her head around and saw a man standing behind her. He had materialized out of nowhere. She caught his eyes first and looked into a flat, bottomless pool. They seemed to lack any distinctive color as he regarded her. There was nothing distinguishing about him in any way except that he seemed aware of every sound and movement around him, as if he was part of the background and could disappear into it at will. Although he looked it, she instinctively knew that he was far from ordinary. He was not tall, short, thin, fat, or in any way distinctive. He did seem familiar, though. It was as if she had seen him just recently, if not today. So many people had passed her on the street; perhaps he had been one of them.
“Where did you come from, sir? I know I have seen you before, but at the same time I know that’s impossible,” Madeleine said, genuinely mystified.
“Do you not remember the kindly policeman that tipped his hat to you, or the drunken service man that stumbled into you and gave you a wolf whistle?”
“Those men were you?” Madeleine could scarcely believe it. Not only did he now look so different, the cop and the soldier couldn’t have been the same man.
“Yes, mademoiselle. Those two and others. Hiding one’s appearance just takes practice. You already have the greatest skill mastered. One that is very difficult to teach.”
“What is that?”
“I have already told you. Patience. This business, I am to teach you requires little in the way of physical ability, but few have the mental strength necessary. Killing another human being is easy. After the first few it will be like turning off a light. The true art is in preparation and flawless execution. You cannot be caught. What you know is too valuable. Besides, it’s not Cricket, as the British say, to murder. ‘Assassinate’ is a nice word, but you will be a murderer. Your targets will have no chance to defend themselves, just like the people they themselves have tortured or killed. As I understand it, your targets will also be murderers. So perhaps you can take some solace in that.”
“My solace comes from avenging the screams of my countrymen, the mangled corpse of my brother, and from God,” Madeleine said in a dangerous voice.
A faint smile flashed across his face.
“Then they will have no one to pray to for protection from you. We will start tomorrow. Bring no weapon. First you learn to kill with your hands and all manner of ordinary objects. Remember, it is not skill that kills, it is knowledge. Skill comes with practice and can be useful. Learning never to hesitate is the most deadly lesson I will teach you. When I am finished with you, you will only fear two people ever again.”
“Who?”
“Me,” he said without the slightest hint of boast or bravado. “You see, long ago I crossed over to a place from which I cannot return. Madeleine nodded, following some of what the man said.
“And who else?” She asked.
“Yourself,” he answered with a hint of sorrow as he walked away, disappearing into the night long before Madeleine should have lost sight of him. She sat transfixed to the bench, mulling over what the man had said. Teach was right: the man was terrifying.
Over the weeks that followed, Madeleine worked exclusively with the German. It became clear to her that she was learning from a master. He shared secrets with her that were truly frightening. She learned by example and constant reinforcement. She began to understand the mindset necessary to do the work that would be asked of her. It would be solitary and frightening. His lessons always came back to the core theme of preparation. The actual act was never technically difficult. It had to do with precise planning so that the assassin could get to the target. She learned that the more simple the details, the less chance for discovery. She began to understand why she had been chosen. It was for her courage and willingness to kill, but just as important was her understanding of the certainty of her own death. She fully expected to be killed in action. Her mentor explained that once agents accepted that fact they could operate with ruthlessness and precision without the hesitation caused by fear. Everyone in battle is afraid. Those who master it survive.
Madeleine was curious about the man’s past. Teach had given her some information. She knew that he had been a highly decorated German soldier in the First World War but he was obviously much more than that. Little by little the man shared some of his personal secrets with her. He told her stories of kills that he had made so that she would understand the mistakes to avoid, mistakes that had nearly cost him his life.
As the weeks progressed, their fieldwork revealed Madeleine’s gifts for disguise, guile, and deceit. She was placed in realistic training situations. Her orders were to avoid other agents trained to catch her. She was discovered twice, and only because the others had been tipped off to her description. In both instances, upon discovery she subdued her counterpart and escaped.
Her training was incessant and as realistic as possible. Many times Madeleine woke in the night with a trench knife held to her throat, the dead eyes of her mentor staring into hers. He forced her to adapt. She began sleeping in odd places and never in the same one twice. It didn’t take her long to realize that her survival would require the same attention in the field. It became second nature, along with the physical and mental lessons that had become part of her. Weapons change over the millennia but little else. Madeleine learned that assassins struck from the shadows of their own making and that confusion and deceit would be her ally. She felt herself evolving into a weapon. She was changing, becoming harder mentally and physically.
Eventually, Madeleine sensed her instructor was expecting something from her that she had not yet accomplished. He found it increasingly difficult to find her at night and finally was unable to do so. She had taken to sleeping in remote places, sometimes out of doors. She learned to drop a tail instinctively, using many twists and turns and false trails to disappear.
Then, by happenstance she saw through her instructor’s disg
uise as he attempted to follow her. He was dressed as a dustman and she knew she’d seen him before. He had made a mistake and she intended to capitalize on it. Madeleine ducked into a women’s clothing shop and was able to hide in the toilet. Once inside she altered her appearance to give her an added advantage. She moved quickly back into the street and followed the dustman all the way to a small block of flats some distance from the SOE Baker Street offices. Dusk was falling and Madeleine noticed a light go on in a small second floor window just before the blackout curtains were closed.
Madeleine waited in an alley as the sun went down rapidly, the shadows of late afternoon becoming the darkness of night. She pulled off her street clothes, revealing dark trousers and a black knit top. She pulled her hair back, carefully, tying it so as not to obstruct her vision. She waited until the street was fully dark and she was sure that her quarry was in for the night. She checked the street and crossed over. Not pausing when she was in open view, she made her way around the side of the house and stopped near a black iron pipe dropping down from the roof. She grabbed it and in a matter of seconds reached the top and carefully lowered her body onto the tile. Her heart was pounding, not from the exertion of the climb but from adrenaline. She breathed slowly and evenly until she felt her limbs lose their rigidity and calmness seeped out from her core. She inched her way over the tile roof, moving silently with acrobatic grace. She kept her weight evenly distributed and tested each pressure point. She made no sound and moved towards the front window. She carefully lowered herself over the edge, finding a foothold on the window ledge as she focused her hearing toward the room. She’d learned that it was possible to focus one’s hearing and ignore collateral sound. Eventually, she heard it: the even breathing of sleep emanating through the partially open window. Little by little, she folded herself into the room and moved silently towards the bed. She took notice of his body position and approached from his blind side, pulling a straight razor from a pocket sewn into the side of her jersey. She opened it and placed it against his neck.