‘I won’t have you do this sort of thing again. It makes me positively sick to think of it. I expect you’ll say that I have no right to interfere, but I have got a right. I’ve loved you for years—you know that! And any man who loves a girl as I love you has every right to protect her from such beastliness.’
‘Pierre darling,’ she laid a hand on his arm as he paused beside her chair, ‘I know you love me, and, of course, you hate it. The thought of that German messing me about tonight must have been even worse for you than the actual experience was for me. But try not to think of it. Every one of us must be prepared to give everything we’ve got for France, and if a girl like myself can be useful that way, then it would be plain cowardice for her to shirk her duty.’
‘No one can accuse me of being unpatriotic,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve proved my love of France with the risks I’ve taken night after night all through this winter. You know that.’
‘Of course I do,’ she murmured.
‘But there’s a limit,’ he went on quickly. ‘You and I have been lucky so far—extraordinarily lucky—but our luck can’t hold for ever. The British and the Germans have reached a stalemate, so it’s absolutely impossible now to foresee any ending to this damned war at all. If we carry on as we’ve been doing we’re bound to be caught. I don’t mind that for myself so much, but the thought of you in a German concentration camp drives me simply crazy. You must agree that I’ve been patient, but it’s getting on for a year now since Georges’ death, and I’ve been watching you pretty closely. You’ve got over that, I’m certain of it; so I’m not going to keep silent any longer. I love you. I want to marry you. Madeleine, let me take you out of this to safety.’
‘But, Pierre,’ she protested, ‘you couldn’t even if you wanted to.’
‘Oh yes, I could. I ran into my cousin, François, only yesterday. He got a special permit to come to Paris on business. His mother—that’s my Aunt Eugénie—has a house at Limoges, and he said that they’d be delighted to have us live with them. It’d be easy enough for us now to cross the frontier into Unoccupied France, and …’
‘But we couldn’t, Pierre!’ she exclaimed. ‘We couldn’t! It would mean throwing up our work here.’
‘That’s true,’ he agreed quite mildly. ‘But hasn’t it occurred to you that we’ve done our share? We were in this thing practically from the beginning, and there are scores of other people now to carry on.’
‘But Lacroix needs all the help he can get.’
Pierre shook his head. ‘Try to look at it as though we were in the Air Force—any Air Force that you like, because they all follow the same plan. The airmen go in as fighter pilots, and for several months they do their stuff. Either they’re killed or put out of action, or if they’re lucky they score a number of victories to their credit. Then they’re promoted and given jobs on the ground to instruct others. They’ve earned that, you see—and it’s probably the knowledge that if they can shoot down enough planes and survive for a number of months, after which they’ll be safe, or reasonably safe, for good and all, which helps them through their tougher spots. Well, we’ve done our stuff and brought down a good bag of the enemy, so there’s nothing cowardly now in our leaving it to others. In Limoges we’d keep in touch with the movement, of course, and continue our work, but on safer ground. I’m not suggesting that we should chuck in our hands altogether.’
Overwrought as he was, Madeleine did not wish to excite him further, so she said: ‘You’re wrong about Georges, dear. His memory is still very close to me. It’s hard on you, I know, but I’m not ready yet to think of anyone else that way. As for leaving Paris, I’m certainly not prepared to at the moment. I can’t tell you why yet, because I don’t even know myself, but I have real grounds for believing that plans are on foot to do something really big which will break the deadlock into which the war seems to have drifted. If that happens conditions may be so altered in Paris that I might feel really justified in leaving it; but until then I’m afraid we must just go on being patient.’
He grumbled a little but made no further strong effort to persuade her, and shortly afterwards they went upstairs to turn in.
Madeleine had purposely refrained from telling Stefan about the job which she had been given to do in the attempt to blow up the bridge over the canal, and when he heard about it on the following day he was gravely perturbed. Ruthless as he was in all other matters, his deep love for Madeleine made him take a very different view of sabotage activities where she was personally concerned. Apart from not asking her to marry him, he took much the same line as Pierre, suggesting that as one of the earliest workers in the freedom movement she had now done more than her share, and that arrangements should be made for her to be got out of Paris to live somewhere in Unoccupied France.
On her flatly refusing to agree he took a much stronger line and said: ‘Vefy well, then. God knows I should hate to be deprived of your company, Madeleine, but I have much more influence with Lacroix than you. If you attempt to take on any further work with the sabotage parties I shall get him to transfer you to some job in Unoccupied France, whether you like it or not, and I’m quite sure that you would not refuse to obey his orders.’
‘But surely that’s unfair, Stefan,’ she remonstrated. ‘You would be abusing your powers in order to shield me out of a personal fondness, and that simply means that some other girl would have to do the dirty work.’
‘Exactly,’ he replied with a cynical smile. ‘I have never hesitated to abuse anything when it suits my book; but since you have already done your part, and others have not, I don’t feel that in this case I should be acting unfairly. The point is that I love you, and having made up my mind that I will not have you expose yourself to greater dangers than need be, or further unpleasantness, that is the end of it.’
Madeleine felt that she should be angry at his taking such a dictatorial tone with her, but somehow she was not. Her pride made her say that she should continue to do as she liked, but they were not called upon to have an actual showdown, since as a result of the attack on the canal locks the Germans decreed a curfew. No citizen of Paris was allowed out in the streets between eight o’clock and dawn without a special pass, and squads of police and troops patrolled the streets all night.
The order had the effect of confining the saboteurs to their homes, so for the next fortnight Pierre hardly went out at all, but Madeleine went early, just about dusk, to the nursing-home, so the other two saw comparatively little of her.
During the first week of May fresh negotiations between Darlan and Abetz, with the slimy Laval acting as a middleman, resulted in the announcement that the German levy for the cost of maintaining an Army of Occupation was to be reduced by 25 per cent., and that the frontier between Occupied and Unoccupied France would now be opened to certain merchandise and some civilians; but it was not stated what further help Vichy had agreed to give the Germans against Britain as the price of these concessions. In the same week Imperial Forces advancing from Basra succeeded in nipping the Iraqi revolt in the bud, and the situation was restored there. Then, on the 10th, came the extraordinary tidings that Deputy Fuehrer Hess had secretly left Augsburg in a Messerschmitt 110 specially equipped for a long-distance flight, and, after making a parachute descent, landed near Glasgow.
With intense interest the world waited to hear the reason for the blood-stained brigand having voluntarily placed himself in the hands of his Fuehrer’s enemies; but, apparently scorning the unrivalled opportunity given to them for effective propaganda, the British Government maintained a complete silence on the matter.
The curfew was lifted after a fortnight and two days later Gregory appeared again, having made a safe and speedy journey from Paris to London and back via Lisbon, during which, between trips, he had put in eight days of frantic work with Sir Pellinore and the P.I.D. people. He arrived with two big suitcases which had been smuggled through with him, and both were crammed with documents that had been forged in accordance with h
is suggestions in London.
He brought one piece of bad news in which Kuporovitch was interested because he knew the man concerned and hated him as much as Gregory did. Herr Gruppenfuehrer Grauber, the dreaded Chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department U.A.-l, whom Gregory had captured in the South of France the preceding June, had escaped from a concentration camp in England.
However, Kuporovitch took the news that their old enemy was free again quite lightly, simply remarking: ‘It’s a pity that you tender-hearted British didn’t shoot the swine when you had him, but I see no reason to be upset about his escape, as that sort of thing is one of the pulls which Britain has through being an island. In the last war plenty of Germans managed to escape from the prisoner-of-war camps, but not one of them ever succeeded in getting out of the country. Scotland Yard has the reputation of being very efficient, so I don’t doubt that Grauber will be behind the bars again within a week or two.’
‘Don’t you believe it!’ said Gregory bitterly. ‘Grauber’s not like any ordinary German—he speaks English as well as I do, and French, and Dutch, and probably several other languages as well. He’s as cunning as a serpent and as slippery as an eel. If he once reaches a big port he’ll manage to get out of the country somehow and back to Germany via Spain, or even America and Russia, if need be. He’s Himmler’s right-hand man and has fifty times the brain of a fellow like Hess, so you can take it from me, Stefan, that his escape is a damn’ bad business.’
On the 18th Lacroix was again in Paris, and they had a long secret session with him, during which he was able to give them the good news that the Duke of Aosta was now surrounded with the bulk of the Italian forces at Ambaalgi and had asked for terms of surrender; so the Abyssinian campaign was as good as over.
On the 20th the Germans launched their blitzkrieg against Crete by sending hundreds of dive-bombers to attack the British naval base at Suda Bay and landing two thousand paratroops in its neighbourhood. In the succeeding days Gregory and Kuporovitch were both frantically busy sorting and arranging their masses of documents, but both followed the new campaign with intense interest.
It was the first occasion in history that an attempt had been made to invade and conquer an island by air power alone, and the outcome of the battle might have an extraordinary influence upon the Germans’ future operations. Quite apart from that, the holding of Crete by the British was of the first importance, since the loss of it would be a great blow to British sea-power in the Mediterranean. As long as the British could hold Crete they were within easy striking distance of Italy and the coast of Cyrenaica, and could render the passage of the Sicilian Channel extremely hazardous to Axis transports carrying supplies from Italy to North Africa; but if Crete were lost the British Navy would be forced back to its bases at the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean.
On the second day of the attack the Germans captured the airfield of Maleme and also succeeded in establishing forces in the neighbourhood of Candia and Rethymno; but the Navy had done its part with its usual efficiency and sunk with appalling losses to the Germans all the seaborne troops despatched from the mainland. Candia and Rethymno were recaptured, but by the end of the week the Germans still held Maleme and had established themselves in an area for ten miles round it.
Gregory knew then that the game was up and cursing long and bitterly. As long as the captured airfield had remained within range of our field batteries the Germans could not land great quantities of troop-carriers and heavy war material on it; but now they had succeeded in pushing back our forces so far they would be able to bring over limitless quantities of reinforcements and arms. As the place was an island far removed from our main bases in Egypt and Palestine the Germans could now throw into it more men and weapons than we could, so it must be only a matter of time before our forces were overcome.
Attention was temporarily diverted from the terrific battles raging in Crete by the appearance of the Bismarck in the Atlantic. On the 24th H.M.S. Hood was sunk, and for the next three days the world followed with bated breath the chase of the giant German battleship, which ended with its total destruction on the 27th; but this news was heavily offset by the Admiralty announcement that Britain had lost two cruisers and four destroyers in the fighting round Crete.
By the end of the month the position in Crete was desperate, and on June the 1st it was announced that 15,000 British troops, the remnants of a gallant Army, had been safely evacuated.
That night Gregory and Kuporovitch again sat staring at the map of Europe.
‘We’ve got to work fast, Stefan,’ Gregory said. ‘It’ll be a race now—between us and Hitler mounting his next offensive, and you can guess where that will be.’
The Russian nodded. ‘Turkey, and a break-out into Asia. Now he’s secured himself from a flank attack there’s nothing to stop his going right ahead. If only the British had put every man they could spare, with all their tanks, into Crete and the other big Greek islands in the Aegean, in the first place, they might be holding them still, and we’d have had longer to make our preparations. As it is, we’ll have to go ahead and chance it.’
‘Exactly,’ Gregory agreed. ‘The tanks that should have smashed up those first German concentrations on the Cretan airfields had already been lost on the Greek mainland. It absolutely passes my comprehension how they can have failed to realise that in the Grand Strategy of the War the mainland was of no real significance, and that they couldn’t hold it anyhow; whereas the retention of Crete and the Greek islands was absolutely vital. Now we’ve lost them the whole of the Aegean will be a nest of German air and submarine bases. We’ll never be able to get any convoys through to help Turkey if she’s attacked, or send the Navy through the Dardanelles and the Marmara to help her defend her long northern coast in the Black Sea against invasion. Turkey is completely isolated, and now the Germans have got those damned islands they’re less than twenty miles from the Turkish coast in several places, and could blitz hell out of Smyrna any night they chose. We can’t blame the Turks if they give way to Axis pressure, and if they do, instead of fighting on the Dardanelles and the Bosphoros, where we would have stood a good chance of holding the Hun in the narrow gate, we’ll have to take the whole weight of the German Army in Syria and Iraq. It’s going to be sheer murder, Stefan, unless we can create some diversion.’
Kuporovitch poured himself another go of cognac. ‘You’ve said it, my friend. The Imperial Forces will have to meet the weight of at least a hundred German divisions in open desert country which is perfect for tank operations. I wouldn’t give a brass button for their chances of stopping the Nazis from getting to Suez and the Persian Gulf. Once that happens they’ll have all the oil they want and southern Asia for the taking.’
Gregory laughed cynically. ‘I reckon your estimate of a hundred divisions is too modest, Stefan. The Nazis know that we’re still far too weak to land a new B.E.F. on the Atlantic coast of Europe. They’ll fling everything in and use the troops of all the jackal nations—Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and the Vichy men in Syria—into the bargain. At least five million German-led troops will come thundering down into Mesopotamia, and I doubt if we’ve got even half a million to oppose them. I just shudder when I think what this Greek adventure may yet cost us.’
‘Well, ours is a forlorn hope,’ Kuporovitch made a grimace; ‘but I agree that we should delay no longer.’
‘All right then,’ Gregory nodded. ‘All the arrangements for planting the stuff are made, and Ribaud had better warn two or three of his people to get out tomorrow. After that, we’ll do a few more every day, then put the balloon up on the 7th.’
On the following afternoon Kuporovitch got Madeleine on her own and said to her: ‘Listen, my loveliness. In a few days now we shall be making our bid to alter the whole course of the war. As you know, I cannot even hint at the form our blow will take, but I can tell you that from now on every member of Lacroix’s organisation will be in extreme danger. You know how, for weeks past, I have been typing nigh
t and day, and that Gregory brought back with him from London hundreds of other forged documents. Since his return we have been sorting and addressing them to various members of the organisation.
‘Each of these carefully varied sets of paper is to be planted in his own dwelling by the person to whom it is addressed. Then they will leave Paris with their families and be smuggled out into Unoccupied France, or Belgium, or Switzerland. On the last day of the operation our key-members will also plant their special documents, and arrangements are being made to get them away in a body. Then one of us will tip off the Germans that a vast conspiracy exists and turn in the addresses of our friends after they have gone. The Nazis will raid their homes and find all these incriminating papers which vary slightly, but tell the same story.
‘While Gregory was in London he made arrangements with the British Secret Service for a similar policy to be pursued upon a smaller scale in Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium; so that when it is uncovered the Germans will believe that this conspiracy has its ramifications throughout the whole of their occupied territories. Upon their reactions to what we are leaving for them to discover depends the success or failure of our enterprise; but the next few days will be a period of extreme danger.
‘There is no way in which we can prevent individual members of our organisation reading the documents that we give them before they put them away in their secret files and leave their homes. If there is a traitor among us we are undone, since he might not only turn over the documents prematurely to the Nazis himself, but consider the time ripe to blow our whole movement sky-high. You know how dearly I love you. Will you, for my sake, agree to leave Paris?’
She smiled up at him. ‘No, Stefan, not even for you. It isn’t fair to ask me. I don’t know what you mean to do, but, whatever it is, you’re doing it because of that outburst of mine the night that Gregory first returned to us. This is my party—my vengeance—and nothing in the world will persuade me not to be with you and Gregory when the blow is struck.’
V for Vengeance Page 33