by Tom Gabbay
My mind raced. I might get one of them, maybe I’d even kill them both, if I got lucky, but not before Popov pulled the trigger. I had no doubt that he would. He’d pull the trigger as I shot Engel, then it would be a race to see if Popov or I survived. It wouldn’t matter, though, not to me, because she’d be gone, and there would be no changing that.
Popov took a step back and planted himself, ready to absorb the gun’s kick.
“DECIDE!” he yelled. “NOW!”
I tossed the gun onto the floor.
“Jack…” Eva moaned. “Oh, Jack…They’re going to kill me anyway…They’re going to kill us all…”
Popov exhaled and lowered his gun. He mumbled something to himself which I didn’t understand, then looked up at me and nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Now we must see if she feels the same about you.” He gave the nod to the Angel, who struggled to his feet, scooped up the Luger, and took aim at my head. I looked to Eva and she looked to me.
“Well, Eva?” Popov said. “Do you love him as much as he loves you?”
I tried to smile at her, to let her know that it was okay, I didn’t mind, but I doubt it looked like a smile. Tears spilled onto her cheeks and ran down her face.
“Just say it,” Popov persisted. “Say that you love him.”
She inhaled sharply and seemed to stop breathing.
“Do you love him, Eva?”
“Yes…” she whispered, barely audible. “Yes, I love him!”
“Then you cannot let him die for the sake of a few papers. Do for him what he did for you. You must save the man you love.”
She turned her eyes toward me. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, too, and that whatever they did with us, it didn’t matter, because we’d had each other, and I was happy with that, I didn’t need more.
But I didn’t get a chance to say anything. A shot rang out and I fell to the floor.
I cried out in pain and grabbed my leg. The bullet had ripped a hole through my right thigh, in the same spot I’d stabbed Engel with the shard of glass. Payback, I guess—but it was just his appetizer.
He picked up the chair that I’d attacked him with and brought it crashing down across a table, smashing it to pieces. Then he selected a long fragment of wood, with a sharp, splintered end, and limped forward, toward me. He stood there for a moment, expressionless, before he carefully placed the pointed end of the wood an inch over the bullet hole he’d just put in my leg. He moved suddenly, driving it hard into the wound with all his might, then twisting it back and forth sharply. My entire being screamed out in unspeakable agony.
“SCHWEIN!” Eva shrieked from across the room. “HE’S RIGHT! YOU ARE A PIG AND A COWARD!” Engel pulled back, threw the wood aside, and turned toward her tearstained face. He smiled.
“I know that I will break you,” he said matter-of-factly. “Of this I can be sure. Because you are weak. Your emotions make you so. It has been already shown.”
Eva breathed in deeply and cast him a steely glare.
“You are the devil on earth,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “And there is nothing—nothing in this world—that can make me help you again!”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then we became aware of a voice. It cut through the night, like a knife through my heart—outside, on the street, distant at first, but approaching quickly, the high-pitched voice of a little girl singing a carefree song to herself as she made her way home from a visit with the neighbor…
“Sur le pont d’Avignon,
On y danse, on y danse…
Sur le pont d’Avignon,
L’on y danse tout en rond…”
CHAPTER 34
“RUN, ABRIELLE! RUN!”
Eva cried out from the bottom of her soul, but it was too late. Engel grabbed the child as she came through the door. She screamed and tried to pull away, but the Angel of Darkness had her in his grip. She punched and squirmed as he hauled her across the room, until she saw Raymond and her uncle lying lifeless on the floor. Then she became quiet, and perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the horror that lay before her.
“Abrielle!” Eva called sharply. “Don’t look at that! Look at me!” The girl looked up, and snapped out of her trance. She tried to run to Eva, but Engel held her back.
“Laissez-moi!”
Abrielle bit hard into the German’s forearm, escaped across the room, and threw her arms around Eva’s neck. Unable to reciprocate, Eva did her best to comfort the girl with soft words whispered in her ear.
“No…” Eva pleaded as Engel came toward them. “She’s a child…She’s just a child…!”
“You see.” Engel smiled as he stood over them. “You show your weakness.”
Abrielle clung to Eva with everything she had, but Engel grabbed her by the hair and brutally yanked her away. I tried to get up, but a scalding pain shot up my spinal cord, sending me back to the floor, writhing in pain and cursing the bastard as he shoved the child onto her knees, just a few feet in front of Eva.
“Roman, please!” Eva begged. “Stop him! You can’t allow this!”
Even Popov had gone a little pale with the turn of events. He gave Eva a sick look and spoke in a shaky voice.
“Tell me now,” he said. “Before it’s too late…”
Abrielle shuddered as she felt the pistol against the back of her head.
“I will count,” Engel said calmly. “To five.”
Abrielle sobbed and tried to call out, but her voice failed her. She couldn’t even manage a whisper.
“EINS…” Engel began, letting it hang in the air.
“Eva!” I called to her, but she was fixed on the horror of the scene and didn’t hear me.
“ZWEI…”
“EVA!” I yelled, and her head whipped around to me. Her eyes were scarlet, overflowing with tears, her face distorted with terror.
“Tell them, Eva! Tell them where it is!”
She shook her head, choked on the air as she tried to draw a breath.
“DREI…”
“Listen to me, Eva!” I was trying desperately to stay calm. “We can’t let this happen…Look at her, Eva, look at Abrielle…”
The little girl couldn’t breathe and her body was shaking uncontrollably.
“VIER…!”
“FOR GOD’S SAKE, EVA, GIVE THEM THE GODDAMNED DOCUMENT!”
Eva shut her eyes and turned away from me, sobbing silently to herself. It was a shocking moment for me, one that shook me to my core, and one that became etched into my mind forever.
I’d accepted that I would die that night, and I was as ready as you can ever be for that. Eva and I had made our silent pact, and at least we would die together, in a good cause and in love. You can’t really ask for too much more than that. But Abrielle…To turn away from her…From that trust that was in her eyes when she looked to us…How could that be right? I couldn’t conceive that saving England—or the whole goddamned planet, for that matter—could be worth the brutal betrayal of that child’s faith.
“FÜNF…!”
My heart stopped beating as Engel squeezed the trigger.
CHAPTER 35
The sound of the shot was gut-wrenching. I flinched, and then my entire being froze.
Had I really seen what I thought I’d seen?
Popov had moved quickly across the room and now he stood, his right arm extended, locked at the elbow, a little pistol gripped tightly in his fist. Engel had had only a fraction of a second to register his shock—the time it took the bullet to travel from the chamber, along the length of the Glock’s barrel, and across six inches of space—before the slug punctured his eye and exploded into his brain. I wondered if he’d felt the hot metal pass through his head, or if his mind had shut down too quickly to register its own destruction. Whatever the case, the Angel of Darkness was crying blood, and he was soon dead on his feet. His body swayed, his legs buckled, and he dropped to his knees, balancing there for a few long seconds before he fell, face-fir
st, onto the floor.
Abrielle raced into my arms. I held her tightly, tried to stop her shaking, but I must have been trembling as hard as she was. I turned my head to look for Eva and saw that Popov was cutting her out of her bindings.
“What the hell just happened?” I said.
“You have made a big fuckup of everything—this is what happened.” He moved over to cut Claude free, too, then Gérard. “You play with things that you don’t understand.”
“I’m missing something.”
“You have missed everything.”
Claude knelt down and gently took the girl from me, carrying her away, sobbing, toward the back room. Eva made a tentative gesture toward her as they passed, but Abrielle recoiled. The hurt on Eva’s face broke my heart all over again.
Our eyes met. She came over to me, fell to her knees, and reached out to touch the pool of blood that had spread across my leg.
“You’ve been wounded,” she said.
CHAPTER 36
Eva helped me into to the back bedroom, where she dressed my injury in silence. I guess there was nothing to say, not that we wanted to say, anyway. When she’d finished wrapping my bandage, Popov appeared at the door.
“I must now have this document,” he said.
Eva gave him a blank look, and I probably did, too. He nodded slowly, sighed, and pulled up a chair. I guess he realized that the time for secrecy had passed.
“There is a group in London,” he began. “A highly secret intelligence service, formed only a month ago, by Churchill himself. It is known as the Twenty Committee, so called because it is represented by the symbol XX—the number twenty in Roman numerals, but it can also be read as a double cross. This is the purpose of this group, and the reason for its existence. To double-cross the enemy. I am the first field agent. Eva was to be the second.”
Eva studied Popov’s face. “Why should I believe you?” she said, her voice betraying her emptiness.
He shrugged. “Think about the facts. You were sent to me by Geoffrey Stevens, in Paris. He told you that I am part of a special branch of intelligence that has just been created, which he did not know much about. He knew only my code name, which is Bicycle…”
“Why didn’t Stropford know about you?” I asked.
“Stropford picks up scraps that have fallen from the table,” Popov smirked. “I have a seat at the table. My work is too important to be shared with others, and I say this not to impress you. It is a fact. Now, please—it is very important that I have this document.”
Eva looked to me, and I nodded.
“I hid it in the piano,” she said.
It was tucked up under the frame at the high end of the plate, between the soundboard and the strings. Maybe the Gestapo would’ve found it, maybe not. Eva handed the thin folder to Popov.
“All this was about that?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “A small package, of enormous value.”
“Mind if I have a look?”
Popov shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?”
I opened to the top page, which was a map detailing the location of all the radar facilities along the south and east coasts of England. Brixham, Weymouth, Shanklin, Eastbourne, Hastings, Margate—each one marked with a coded number that could be referenced on the following pages. I flipped to a random page, which gave detailed information about the Hastings placement, in East Sussex. It provided the exact latitude and longitude of the facility, along with operational details, telephone and telegraph links to the network, and security information. It even listed the home telephone number of the station manager.
I was no expert, but I’d read enough about the new radar technology to know that without it, Britain would be blind and defenseless. German bombers—thousands of them—would be virtually unchallenged as they rained their Blitzkreig down on the ports, airfields, factories, and cities of England. RAF fighters would be destroyed on the ground in a matter of days, leaving the Channel open to the invasion force. The Wehrmacht, advancing behind four panzer divisions, would cut through the British forces, still reeling from Dunkirk, like a hot blade through English butter.
Of course, it would probably never come to that. Once the radar stations were gone, even Churchill would have to see the futility of fighting on. And if he didn’t, he’d be shown the door and a new prime minister—one who could see the Nazi writing on the wall—would be given the key to Downing Street. That was the scenario that His Former Royal Highness, Edward VIII, dreamed about, anyway. The duke was no troublesome peacemaker who naively hoped to save his country from ruin by suing for peace with Germany. He was an out-and-out traitor.
“Impressive,” I said, handing the folder back to Popov.
“Will you destroy it?” Eva asked.
“Destroy it?” Popov looked incredulous.
“Yes. Burn it…”
“No…” Popov shook his head and smiled mischievously. “I will pass it to the Gestapo…just as I always intended.”
I noticed that he’d placed his pistol on the piano, and edged toward it. “So what you just told us about the Twenty Committee…”
“Is absolutely true,” he said, picking up the pistol.
“Then—?”
“It’s not real.”
“What?”
“This document.” Popov displayed the folder. “It was created by the Twenty Committee, with the full intention that Hitler would receive it from the Duke of Windsor.”
“The duke is part of this?”
“No, no, he is certainly not. The duke and duchess believe they will provide Germany with accurate information.”
I don’t know if I looked confused, but I sure felt it. Fortunately, Popov was ready to tell all.
“You see, the British government has suspected for some time that the duke and his wife have been acting in a treasonous fashion. Since the ninth of November in 1939, to be precise.”
“What happened then?” Eva asked.
“Do you remember Charles Bedeaux?”
“Yes, of course.”
I recalled that he was the American businessman who had been Eva’s contact in Paris. He’d introduced her to Geoffrey Stevens, who later sent her to Lisbon to find Popov.
“On the ninth of last November, he was seen entering the German Chancellery in Berlin. Once inside, he was escorted to a room where he met two high-ranking officials of the Reich. One was Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe. The other was Adolf Hitler. The purpose of their meeting was for Bedeaux to provide Hitler and Göring with the entire defensive positions of the French and British forces. As a result of what they heard from him, the German invasion of France was postponed so that a new plan could be devised, one that took account of this invaluable intelligence.”
““What’s that have to do with the Duke of Windsor?” I asked.
“Three days before that meeting, on six November, in Paris, the duke and duchess dined with Charles Bedeaux and his wife in their suite at the Ritz. At the conclusion of the meal, the men excused themselves to a private room where they spoke for nearly two hours. At the end of the discussion, the duke gave Bedeaux a letter.”
“The contents of the letter could not be confirmed, but the following morning, Bedeaux departed by train, traveling first to Brussels, and then to Cologne, where he stayed the night. He finally arrived in Berlin on the evening before he met with Hitler.”
“Are you saying that the Duke of Windsor was responsible for the fall of France?” I said.
“The circumstances certainly suggest it. The duke’s position as liaison officer between the British and French forces put him in a unique position to access sensitive information. And it is suspicious that the Wehrmacht seemed to know the weakest point in the French defenses…But, of course, there was not enough evidence to make an accusation of treason against the former King of England.” “So you gave him some, to see what he would do with it.”
“Yes, that’s true. There is no doubt that the duke is a traitor now. B
ut this was not the primary reason for the operation. In fact, the duke’s treachery must remain an absolute secret. It is essential that the Germans do not know that he is suspected.”
The penny finally dropped.
“Because the Luftwaffe will be bombing radar facilities that don’t exist,” I said.
“They do exist,” Popov said. “But they are no more than empty buildings, built specifically to be the target of German bombs. The actual stations are very well hidden.”
I had to smile. “So the Duke of Windsor’s treason handed France, Holland, and Belgium to Hitler on a silver platter, but it may be responsible for saving England.”
“Clever, yes?” Popov couldn’t help smiling, too. “It was my idea.”
CHAPTER 37
Eva and I never said good-bye. She was gone the next morning, leaving me with just a couple of lines on a scrap of paper:
Think of me on our train to Paris, Jack.
I wish we’d never had to jump off…
Eva
She stayed in France, of course, becoming an invaluable, and later, much-renowned asset to British intelligence, their primary link to the Resistance in Paris. Her exploits have been well documented in many books and articles, some of which I’ve read, most of which I’ve chosen not to.
Eva was hanged at Ravensbrück on March 30, 1945, a month before the camp was liberated. I don’t know what her last days were like, but I’m absolutely positive that they never made her talk.
I’ve never known anyone like Eva. She was, and always will be, unique. A beautiful, sensual woman, with a soft spirit and a will of iron, she had decided that there was nothing in the world that could make her surrender to the forces of evil that she had once been a part of. I think, if there is such a thing, she must have found redemption for her sins.
With time, I came to better understand what she’d done. It wasn’t long after that night in Paris that I, as an army lieutenant, was sending kids to their deaths, justifying it by that tried-and-true apology of war, that each one of the lives we sacrifice will save dozens, maybe hundreds, of others. I also came to learn that a piece of your own soul goes off with each one of those young faces that doesn’t come back.