Initiation

by S C Brown

  Brunswick returned to the 184th Supply Battalion barracks, where he found his men on good form but there were fewer of them. Berner had called one truck back to Paris unexpectedly. Brunswick, having promised his men fresh supplies of coffee and chocolate tomorrow, strolled back to Battalion Headquarters, gave the haggard-looking Major Vogel all the paperwork from the Office of Supply he wanted, and then asked to use the radio room to send a report to Paris. The Major happily obliged. With that done, Brunswick headed back into Rouen to get ready to return to Paris tomorrow. That gave him the evening with Angelika…

  * * *

  Lieutenant Schmidt groaned as he shuffled into his office, nursing a hangover. His team had appreciated the late start that only meant that they had all drunk a bit more than they should have done last night, celebrating the re-opening of the railway.

  The engineering office was mayhem, phones were ringing, raised voices, commotion. The over-animated staff ignored Schmidt’s mumbled questions. Schmidt walked up to let his Company Commander know he was in work at last.

  ‘You took your bloody time. Where have you been?’

  ‘I told you last night,’ Schmidt rubbed the front of his head, ‘late start to allow the boys to let what hair they have down a little. They have worked hard and I felt that -’

  ‘You’re going back out. The railway line was attacked and blown last night.’

  Schmidt sank into a chair. ‘Where?’

  ‘Exactly where they hit it last. You’re to return to the bridge and make the necessary checks. I want your initial report by midday.’

  ‘Where’s the crane?’ asked Schmidt.

  ‘Fortunately, the crane is still intact and in Rouen. I am waiting for a train to get it up there.’

  ‘Don’t rush with the crane, Sir.’ Schmidt looked wearily out of the window at the rain.

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because, if it is a repeat of the same attack, then they will have mined the tracks again. I will need the Pioneer Companies to get up there first to sweep the tracks for mines, and with all that metal around, they will have to do it by hand.’ Schmidt laughed quietly to himself.

  ‘You think this is funny?’

  ‘You have to admire them, don’t you? They’re playing us and winning.’

  That was the moment when Schmidt learned just how angry his boss could get.

  * * *

  Hearing footsteps approach his cell was enough to send Michel into a scrabbling frenzy. He muttered ‘no, no, no’ as they dragged him back to the torture room.

  Michel burst into tears as the same ritual began all over again. The restraints, the pacing, the music, the chair, the drawer, the ashtray and the cigarette.

  But something was different. Michel could see it in Ritter’s eyes. He was agitated about something. Impatient. Ritter spoke to Michel in clear, perfect French. ‘If anyone recognises you ever again after what we are going to do to you today, you will be a fortunate man. Be clear about this Michel, I am in total control here. What I say goes, you understand me?’ Ritter was really wound up about something. Extremely angry.

  But Ritter was talking. Michel thought that at last this could be the start of interrogation, the chance to talk. A chance for hope.

  ‘Bench,’ said Ritter, standing up and removing his jacket.

  Michel snapped his head from side to side to work out what was happening, breathing fast. Michel felt his wrists come free. Jean picked Michel up from behind, his thick arms clasped across Michel’s chest and dragged up onto the steel-topped table. His lungs shrank against the cold of the steel. He felt his wrists and ankles being tethered. Michel stared upwards at metal hooks. Damp was forming flaky light brown circles on the ceiling around them.

  Any hope Michel had built up had gone.

  Ritter rolled up his sleeves and stared down at the broken Michel like a surgeon.

  Jean ripped open what was left of Michel’s shirt. Michel’s mouth opened quickly as Ritter connected a metal grip to one of his nipples. Jean and Ritter stood back. Michel swung his head from side to side and closed his eyes.

  ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? Just let me talk,’ said Michel quickly. Michel began to blurt out addresses of houses that he knew the Resistance would have emptied out by now but information that would look credible in the eyes of someone like Ritter.

  Ritter wasn’t listening. Instead, he reached out to a switch on the wall and pulled it downwards.

  Michel’s chest burned. His whole body arched before slamming back into the table. Michel’s arms and legs kicked and punched out against the restraints. Michel could hear himself screaming. The burning stopped. Michel’s urine flowed across the table. His head thudded as it fell back onto the table.

  ‘Did you like that, Michel, would you like more?’ Ritter’s voice was velvet. Michel looked across at Ritter, not fully understanding what was happening to him or why. Michel watched Ritter’s hand move to a switch and pull it down again.

  Michel clamped his eyes shut as the searing in his chest began again. This time, his spasms were more frequent. The whole table shook as he jerked about. Michel could smell his chest hair burning.

  Michel opened his eyes to see Ritter’s face in front of him. Ritter seemed to be inspecting him with that same, tight-lipped smile on his face. Michel wondered if Ritter was admiring his own work.

  ‘Pain, Michel - it’s a wonderful thing. Chair,’ he said.

  The restraints were released and Michel, lacking any strength, fell off the table and hit the stone floor hard. With the wind knocked out of him, Michel was useless. It took two attempts to get Michel back onto the chair.

  His wrists crunched once again under the restraints. Michel looked down at the red blotches on his chest and his black, bleeding nipple.

  Ritter took a seat in his usual chair and lit another cigarette. It gave Michel a little pleasure to see his own blood staining Ritter’s shirt.

  Michel burbled something incomprehensible.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Ritter cheerfully, ‘you wanted to tell me lots of things, didn’t you?’

  Red bubbles frothed about Michel’s cracked lips. He burbled again.

  ‘You know what,’ said Ritter lighting a cigarette and smiling at Jean cheerily, ‘I’m going to let you talk for once.’

  But Michel couldn’t talk. The electrocution had numbed him to the point of insensibility. Desperate to talk, Michel couldn’t. The stress, the urgency, the burden, all too clear in his eyes.

  ‘No?’ asked Ritter playfully. ‘Change of heart, Michel? Suddenly less willing to participate?’

  Michel made noises but not words.

  ‘Good, good.’ Ritter relaxed into his chair and triumphantly exhaled smoke upwards. He then returned his glare to Michel. ‘Same time tomorrow, then?’

  Michel felt it. It was terrifying and soothing all at the same time. Michel hadn’t thought it was possible in a human being but Michel felt his soul break. Snap like a twig. Michel sighed heavily as any fight or determination to win or even survive left him, leaving a vacuum, black and despairing.

  Michel began to weep uncontrollably. The long hours he had spent in the cell hatching even the smallest schemes to help Michel keep fighting against Ritter, even if just mentally – all for nothing. Michel had surrendered his will. He wept louder. Everything was futile, any desire for life, gone. Waves of desperate sadness flowed through him and out of him.

  Amused, Ritter sat back down. He hadn’t seen this before.

  ‘Jean, go and bring me coffee. Bring Michel water. This could be good.’

  In time, broken and resigned to his own death, Michel talked. As he divulged more than he knew he should, his voice lacked any emotion. The faces of the men and women he betrayed came and went in his mind dispassionately.

  Ritter needed another sheet of paper.

  * * *

  Franck was having none of it. He and Eve were here to watch and not be watched, listen but not be heard. Eve whispered her disagreement acr
oss the café table. This mission was going nowhere. The only person gaining anything from this was the café owner. They still knew nothing of Berner’s plans, activities, and routine. She needed more. Longer than usual silences filled the otherwise empty café. Eve noticed Franck spending his time between watching the HQ opposite and catching sneaky glimpses at her legs. Maybe that was why Franck was so keen to keep things as they were. Eve gave up for a while and pretended to read a newspaper whilst plotting her next move. Franck lit another cigarette in broody silence as a waiter filled both their cups and quickly disappeared out the back.

  All of a sudden, Franck nudged Eve, who looked up impatiently. Franck was looking out onto the avenue. Eve followed his gaze. There stood Walter Berner in a raincoat with no hat, chatting to the guards.

  Franck was completely still, his cigarette clamped between whitening lips. Eve let her newspaper slowly sink to her lap.

  Berner swept his eyes from left to right, glancing into the café just as he had last time and then set off.

  ‘I’ll go and get the boys,’ Franck said quietly and left. The doorbell tinkled. Eve raised her newspaper, looking like she was reading. What was Berner up to this time?

  A waiter topped Eve’s cup up as she pretended to read, thinking what to do next. The minutes ticked by.

  The doorbell tinkled again, a chair scraped across the floor next to Eve. Eve lowered her newspaper and her eyes met an unwavering glare from piercing, intelligent eyes.

  Sitting in Franck’s chair was Walter Berner.

  Eve froze dumbstruck. In the silence, Berner pushed Franck’s half-filled coffee cup carefully to one side but never once took his eyes off Eve. Brunswick was right, this girl was beautiful, if a little pale. He noticed her gripping the newspaper so tightly her knuckles had gone white.

  Berner spoke very quietly and in English. ‘You are a British agent and your codename is Eve. You know exactly who I am.’

  Eve wanted to scream but kept still, trying to think of what to do next. Her mind raced.

  Berner continued, his voice calm and controlled. ‘Finish your coffee. Then you and I will walk across the road and into the Hotel before your monkeys get back from their wild goose chase. Let’s not make a fuss about this. Do not make a noise, or do anything that will draw attention to yourself.’ He nodded at Eve to make sure his message had sunk in.

  ‘Or what?’ Eve spat back.

  Berner spread his hands wide. ‘Failure to comply will hurt.’

  Eve gave a slow, deliberate nod. She folded her newspaper, put it down and took a slow sip of coffee, buying time to think. Berner was blocking her escape through the front door. She looked at the glass of the window, using the reflection to see behind her. There was no one in the corridor that led to the back of the café and the back door. She could see the door was ajar.

  But Berner was ahead of her. ‘I know what you’re doing, Eve. Forget the back door. I have a man there waiting.’

  Eve’s heart sank as she noticed a shadow of a man move behind her.

  ‘Sadly for you, the waiters here are in the pay of the Resistance and the Abwehr. Your sudden disappearance will therefore go unseen and unreported.’

  Eve’s face screwed up with fury.

  Berner continued, laying out his points like a card player slowly putting down the winning hand. ‘Also, in case you needed any more convincing, Eve, if you fail to comply with my instructions, I will have your hosts, Mr and Mrs Agard, shot. Oh yes, I know all about them too. You have the lives of many people as well as your own in your hands right now, Eve, so think your next move through very carefully indeed.’

  Berner rested, waiting for Eve’s response.

  Eve thought through her options and drew a conclusion. She turned her head to look Berner straight in the eye and give an enigmatic smile.

  ‘I didn’t last that long, did I?’ asked Eve, still smiling.

  ‘No.’

  And with that, Eve stood up and waited for Berner to lead her out the front door. Berner wasted no time; he gripped Eve just above the elbow and pushed her across the street as tactfully as he could. Eve tried to force Berner to walk slower but he was having none of it. Eve tried to break the rhythm of Berner’s walk and once tried to scrape her shoe down his shin. Berner kept his legs just far enough away from her and pressed on relentlessly across the road towards the Hotel Majestic.

  Eve suddenly pulled away, twisting Berner’s arm but his responses were quicker than Eve had expected. Berner quickly twisted his arm back and Eve was held fast in his grip. Berner pulled her through the gateway, past the guards. Another man in civilian clothing appeared from a dark corner, wheeled on the spot and grabbed Eve’s other elbow. Eve felt her feet lift slightly from the ground and in seconds, she was inside the Hotel, down a bleak, grey staircase and down into a maze of corridors lined with cable runs and pipes. The corridors dripped condensation. Corridor after corridor, corner after corner, Eve soon lost track of which direction she was being walked in. She knew she was being deliberately confused so she could not remember her way out. The corridors were empty of people. They’d thought of everything.

  * * *

  Franck practically threw the café door off the hinges. ‘Where is she? Where’s she gone?’ he panted.

  ‘She just left,’ lied the waiter wiping down a table. ‘A drink while you wait for her to come back, perhaps?’ he chanced.

  Franck wasn’t thirsty.

  * * *

  The room was much bigger than Eve was expecting. There was a desk with three chairs arranged around it. The off-white walls looked thick and solid. There were no windows. The only way in or out was by the door, which looked heavy. Armchairs lined the far wall, a wooden wardrobe stood empty to her left. Behind the desk, stood a man and a woman, both in Army uniform but in shirts, not jackets. Both in their early thirties, they looked fit, strong and handy. Their eyes bore into Eve’s, lacking in emotion. Eve noticed how the girl had short hair, narrow pale lips and broad shoulders. The man was a little thin on top but blonde, strong and angular. They looked like gymnasts.

  Without a word being said, Eve was marched into the middle of the room but not too close to the desk. Eve watched the door shut and heard it being locked from the outside. She could hear feet shuffle outside in the corridor.

  The woman walked forward and frisked Eve for weapons, feeling expertly under her arms and into her crotch. She removed Eve’s watch and handbag to the desk and searched it. Eve said a silent thank you: Smithens had always advised her not to carry a gun unless she had to. The woman pulled a short knife from her trouser pocket and sliced through the lining of Eve’s bag. Nothing.

  Eve felt all the eyes upon her and still no one spoke. Eve and Berner took a moment to study each other. His hair and eyes were the same as in the photos: this was Berner alright, thought Eve to herself. Standing behind the desk with his fingertips resting lightly on it, his face looked very white in the bald light. He wore a dark grey chalk-stripe suit, it was a little baggy and Eve had no way of telling if he was wearing a pistol or not. Berner did not once look at any other part of Eve except her eyes.

  ‘Eve, first of all, I want to say that I know you are a foreign agent working in France. It’s very dangerous work and I respect you and anyone like you who comes here knowing just how dangerous this sort of thing is.

  ‘I know you have been trained in resisting interrogation, just like all the others.’ His voice was slow, with a slight south German accent. It took Eve a moment to realise he was speaking English. His face betrayed no emotion but the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead made Eve think he was nervous.

  ‘Agents like you, Eve, all get the same training and I know what it consists of. The training is good. I know that I will have to use considerable violence to get someone like you to talk. Or drugs. You probably already know that I prefer not to use such methods. I prefer instead to let you chose to talk and live, or be sent away and killed.

  He continued. ‘I know who you are. Y
ou know me too, or rather, you know of me. You’ve had me followed and monitored. That’s pretty much all you have done, so I can only assume I am the focus and the reason for you being in Paris. It wasn’t hard to work out what you were up to. I’m impressed London reacted that quickly in sending someone to tail me. I’m less impressed they sent someone clearly so junior. The tradecraft of you and your friends has not been good. I have learned everything I need to know about you, so I saw no advantage in delaying your arrest further. So here you are.’

  ‘Here I am,’ said Eve.

  ‘So this is the only question I will pose to you. Will you agree to work with me, send false messages to London on my behalf and live or refuse my request and be dead within two days? Do you understand the question?’

  Eve nodded.

  Berner returned the gesture, turned to the door and knocked twice. A small hatch shot sideways, dark eyes clocked Berner waiting. And after a jangling of keys, two locks unbolted and the door squeaked slightly as the door opened. He was gone.

  The door closed and Eve heard both locks being closed.

  The woman spoke in heavily accented English. ‘You will stand up all night and all day. You will not sit down, not even to eat. We will feed you and give you a little to drink. Otherwise you are to remain silent. You will stand up and make your decision. Yes?’

  Eve nodded. The man and woman sat down. And so it began.

  With no clock on the walls and neither of her guards wearing watches, Eve had little choice but to just stand there. Eve had been through this before in training and knew how to subtly bend her knees a little, wiggle her toes and fingers a little and sway her arms very gently to keep a sense of movement and shift the weight from foot to foot.