by David Gilman
A Gestapo agent looked up at him. Koenig knew him: Rudi Leitmann was a fresh-faced young man of similar age, dressed less formally than one would expect, in a loose jacket and slacks, a man who could be mistaken for a postgraduate student. He got up from the chair facing the tortured woman and stepped into the corridor.
‘What are you doing away from your desk, Koenig? Slumming it?’ he said in a pleasant tone.
Koenig looked past him into the darkened cell where two Gestapo interrogators in plainclothes were taking a rest from their exertions. The men’s jackets were on the backs of chairs at the small metal table where cigarettes burned. Their sleeves were rolled, their shirts sweat-soaked and splashed with droplets of blood.
‘Standartenführer Stolz wants to know if she’s told you anything.’ He hesitated, unable to take his eyes off the battered woman. ‘My God,’ he whispered, his mouth suddenly dry. ‘Is she dead?’
Leitmann nodded to one of the thugs, who emptied a bucket of water over Suzanne. The shock of the cold water made her gasp back into consciousness. ‘Tell him we’re making progress. Another dozen were rounded up last night. We have our hands full here.’ He returned to the small metal table and raised a stack of identity books. ‘These are what they had on them.’
Hauptmann Koenig looked uncertainly back at the injured woman. If they kept up the brutality of this interrogation she would surely die before she gave them any useful information. Leitmann took a crumpled cigarette from his pocket and tugged out one of the stained identity papers. ‘She had an English cigarette on her. These are her papers. She tried to shove them down a drain but the snatch squad got them. The man who was killed was French, a British-trained saboteur. She told us that much. His papers are in here as well.’
Koenig took the documents offered by Leitmann. Hiding his feelings of disgust he nodded his thanks and turned away, watched by an unperturbed Leitmann who straightened and lit his cigarette.
*
Around the corner from the Palais de l’Élysée, 11 Rue des Saussaies housed the Gestapo offices but Standartenführer Stolz had brought some of the most efficient of the secret police into his own Sicherheitsdienst headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch. Stolz’s office was a few steps down from the fifth floor where prisoners were often brought in from the various city prisons for ongoing interrogation.
Stolz’s office was uncluttered except for a few paintings he had looted from one of the galleries. He liked the Impressionists. Their work reminded him of his family’s holiday home in Bavaria. The dabs of sunlight speckling across lakes, and the russet shadows of the forests. A vast Persian rug spread across the polished herringbone wooden floor offered warmth underfoot, and his desk, a nineteenth-century ormolu-mounted rosewood bureau seized from a wealthy Jewish family, was reputed to have been used by one of the presidents of France. Legends, as Stolz well understood, were often more powerful than reality. He shuffled the documents he held; there were others on his desk, a collection of papers seized from suspects. He studied each one closely, absent-mindedly correcting the position of the Knight’s Cross on his tunic. Hauptmann Koenig stood at the door waiting for his orders but Oberst Bauer waited uneasily at the side of Stolz’s desk. As Stolz finished looking at each document he passed it to the Abwehr officer.
‘Himmler wants fifty executed for each dead Luftwaffe officer,’ said Stolz.
‘There will be reprisals?’ the veteran soldier asked, surprised. He understood that the few rogue acts of violence in the city were nothing more than the scattered acts of malcontents.
‘We prefer the term “retaliatory measures”.’ Stolz picked up and compared the captured identity and ration cards.
‘Arresting and executing so many will seriously compromise whatever collaboration we enjoy,’ Bauer argued. He had worked with the police these past two years, building a small network of informers, people prepared to betray others if they were protected from being rounded up themselves.
Stolz raised his eyes to meet Bauer’s. ‘I agree two hundred executions would be... time consuming... so I’ve persuaded the Reichsführer that twenty should be shot for each dead officer.’ He smiled. ‘We cannot be more reasonable than that, can we?’ He looked over to where Koenig still waited. ‘See to it, captain.’
‘Yes, sir. Should I give orders to make random arrests on the streets?’
‘No. Go through the prisons. Black marketeers, pimps, murderers, politicals – it makes no difference.’
Koenig hesitated. ‘They would be under civil control, sir.’
Stolz looked at him and dropped the documents on to his desk. He lit a cigarette. ‘Captain, what did you do before the war?
‘I was an accountant, sir.’
‘Which is why I asked for you on my staff. You’re very precise. It’s a quota; let’s fulfil it. On reflection, Koenig, we must be seen to be actively pursuing our edicts. Random street arrests, for twenty or thirty, but use the gendarmes to do it, not our men.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Koenig, and closed the door gently behind him.
Stolz returned to studying the identity documents on his desk. He fingered one badly soiled and damp document. ‘Suzanne Colbert. I know that name.’ He tapped his finger on the desktop, then opened a drawer and took out a sheaf of brown folders, quickly sorting through them until he found the one he wanted. He stabbed at a bearded man’s photograph attached to the file. There were few signs of grey in the hair at his temples; it was dark and longer than the usual short back and sides, but his beard had flecks of silver and forewarned of greying in the not-too-distant future. Stolz flipped through the dossier. ‘Henry Mitchell. Forty-five-year-old Englishman, lived here for years. A mathematics lecturer, yet he helped smuggle out some top people. He had a great deal of information that we were desperate to secure. He was a high priority at the time. He escaped to England. He was married to a Frenchwoman... a...’ He turned a couple more pages and raised his head, smiling at Bauer. ‘Suzanne Colbert.’
*
Stolz and Bauer stood with the young Gestapo officer Leitmann, at Suzanne’s cell door.
‘This is appalling,’ said Bauer. ‘Give us enough time and we will find the assassins that you are after. The Resistance in this area is weak – there’s no organization to speak of. And my men are better suited to extracting information than yours. Standartenführer Stolz, you torture suspects and their information is dubious at the very best.’
Leitmann, however, ignored the army intelligence officer and addressed his remarks to Stolz, who stood passively watching the wounded woman. ‘She’s not going to give us anything more than she has already.’
‘And the other woman who was caught with her?’
‘Danielle Marmon. We’re checking on her, but she’s so terrified she’d have told us if she knew anything. I think she just got caught up in the sweep.’
Stolz did not take his eyes from Suzanne. ‘Get her,’ he said softly.
Leitmann nodded to the two Gestapo interrogators as Stolz stepped into the cell and lifted the metal chair slowly – no sudden movements, no scrape of metal on the concrete floor sluiced with water and blood. Stolz placed his cap on the nearby table and ran a smoothing hand across his hair. He lit a cigarette. The pungent tobacco would ease the stench in the room.
‘Your leg must be painful. The bone is shattered. Infection has set in already,’ he said gently and then reached out as if to touch her leg.
Suzanne flinched. Stolz sat back and blew out smoke.
‘It’s all right. I can have the doctors look at it for you. I can take the pain away.’ His voice offered comfort and the promise of relief from her agony.
Suzanne stared at the man who tormented her. One of her eyes was still closed; her petticoat was stained with vomit. Her lips moved but no words came. She knew they were going to inflict even more pain on her.
Stolz studied her. ‘You are very brave, Suzanne. I know that because I have seen wounded men cry out for their mothers. And I have seen other terrorists be
g for their lives after only a few brief hours of the pain.’ He reached forward, and she flinched again, but he slowly and carefully eased a lock of hair away from her face. ‘Shhh. It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘I know. I know. It hurts.’
Suzanne’s eyes welled up and the tears tracked through the grime on her face. No matter who he was, his were the first tender words she had heard since the pain began and like a wounded animal a part of her responded.
‘I also know you won’t give us anything further.’ He sat back and drew on the cigarette. ‘I’m sorry you won’t let me help you. I know who you are. Your husband is one of the men I would like to question. Very much. He has information that would be of great benefit to my work here.’
He glanced up at the doorway as two soldiers dragged a gaunt, terrified young woman into the cell. Danielle too had been stripped to her slip – but she was dirty only from the crude conditions of her cell. There were no signs of torture yet.
Stolz watched the girl, whose wide-eyed horror at seeing her mother rendered her speechless. She gulped air, desperately trying to stay on her feet, and Suzanne shook her head in warning. Say nothing. Deny everything.
Danielle bit her lip and turned her face away.
‘You and the Englishman have a daughter,’ said Stolz.
‘I don’t know where she is,’ Suzanne croaked through her parched throat and swollen jaw.
Stolz turned his eyes on Danielle. He smiled, his voice carefully modulated, offering no threat. ‘Your papers were not as convincing as the others. Enough perhaps for a casual inspection, but not for any detailed examination. Beneath your identity card photograph, we found the faint impression of another name. Your family name. Danielle Mitchell.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘No? I think, yes.’ He reached out a hand and lifted Suzanne’s face from her chest where she tried to hide any hint of recognition. ‘So. Do I execute you or your child? Where is the agent you were helping last night? And where is your husband? Did he come back here or is he still in England? What kind of a man abandons his wife and child?’
Suzanne stared back at him defiantly.
‘No?’ He pushed back the chair and took out his service pistol. The Gestapo thugs pushed Danielle against the wall. Stolz calmly put his pistol against her head.
‘Mother!’
‘I don’t know! I don’t! He’s in England. We were supposed to escape together but we got delayed. We were separated.’
Bauer shouted at Stolz: ‘This is inhuman. It’s a disgrace!’
‘Your duties here are over. You have been reassigned to something less demanding. Koenig, see the colonel out.’
What threat could Bauer offer to dissuade Stolz? None. Defeated, he turned away, followed by Hauptmann Koenig.
Stolz stepped back and indicated the chair. ‘Put her in the chair, so her mother can see her face.’
The two interrogators held Danielle firmly on the chair; Suzanne couldn’t take her eyes off her.
‘Tell them, please... Mother... please...’ she begged.
Suzanne shook her head. ‘I can’t. I don’t know anything more.’ She looked up at Stolz, who finally dropped the stub of his cigarette beneath the toe of his boot. ‘Please don’t hurt her... I don’t know. I swear.’
Stolz pressed the muzzle of his pistol into the top of Danielle’s head. His eyes stayed on Suzanne, watching every moment of her despair. The click as the gun’s hammer was thumbed back seemed impossibly loud. Danielle’s rasping sobs filled the room.
Suzanne’s tears spilt salt on to her cut lip. ‘I love you, my baby,’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’
No mother would sacrifice her child. Stolz knew she had no more information to give and he eased the hammer down and holstered the pistol. Both women nearly collapsed with relief. Stolz picked up his cap. He looked as though he had lost interest in the proceedings.
He turned from Suzanne to Leitmann. ‘Execute her.’
*
In the doorway that led to the high-walled yard, a shivering, terrified Danielle was held by soldiers as Suzanne was dragged outside. Her injured leg meant she could not stand and had to be strapped to a post. A soldier was ready with a Schmeisser machine pistol. A junior SS officer stood to one side, pistol in hand, ready to deliver the final shot.
Stolz and Leitmann waited as Suzanne’s manacles were fastened. Leitmann showed Danielle the picture of Mitchell.
‘One last chance. Tell me what your mother could not. The agent who escaped, and your father. Where are they?’
Danielle looked from the picture of her father to her mother chained to the post, and then back at Stolz. Her eyes implored him. ‘I would tell you; I swear I would. I don’t know. Father is in England. That’s all I know. He’s not in France.’
‘In times such as these it is a tragedy to be innocent,’ Stolz said.
Hauptmann Koenig stepped forward. ‘Sir. There is an explicit agreement between us and the French that we do not execute women by firing squad. Colonel, with respect, we have always upheld that agreement. Should we not send her to the camps?’
Stolz looked at the young officer. ‘Thank you for reminding me, captain. You can return to your duties.’
Koenig wanted to say more, to push his senior officer into compliance with the long-established agreement. Women terrorists were usually sent to one of the camps or to Stuttgart where they were beheaded. His thoughts faltered as he saluted and walked away. She was his enemy, her fate was not his to decide, but if Stolz had her shot, when the names of those executed were entered into the records it would be proof of a breach of the agreement. Uncertainty clouded his mind. He was an accountant and now it seemed he was being asked to keep a double ledger. The records wouldn’t balance otherwise.
Leitmann gestured to his interrogators to take Danielle away. Leitmann’s thugs dragged her into the darkened tunnel which led back to the cells that awaited her and all the others who were swept up by the French police and Gestapo. She cried out, begging for mercy, her pleas echoing around the squalid airless passage and its dank walls dripping with condensation and the tears of the lost. As they hauled her away, a sudden burst of sub-machine gunfire thundered through the confined space, its heavy staccato beating down on her, hammering her into submission. She fell silent, her legs giving way as she collapsed into a deep faint.
Stolz and Leitmann watched as the executed woman’s torn body was given the finishing shot to the head.
‘What now, sir?’ said Leitmann.
Stolz took Mitchell’s photograph from his Gestapo officer. ‘We bait the trap and snare him.’
‘Sir, if the English have any suspicion that we have an informer in the Resistance, is it likely they will risk sending him?’
‘Perhaps not. But if they do it will be soon. And once he is captured we will control any future British-led operations here – and break the Resistance.’
4
Buckinghamshire, England
February 1943
Harry Mitchell gazed up at the evening sky. The low cloud and impending rain offered the promise that no German bomber would tear open the earth tonight. Cloud or not, it would soon be time for the blackout. There were eleven scattered houses in the hamlet and soon, one by one, thick curtains would be drawn, extinguishing their presence, leaving darkness where once there had been warmth and light.
He checked his wristwatch. Time to cycle the six miles for his night shift. He dragged the curtains across the small windowpanes and rolled his waterproof cape under his arm. The room was modest. A single bed, a small desk and a moth-eaten rug on the draughty floorboards, but there was a coal fire and he needed little more. A place to sleep. And remember. He propped the small photograph of the two women he cherished on the desk. He always put it where he could see them, even when he lay in bed, and touching the picture kept their memory alive. Separated by two years and the English Channel, his wife and child were still missing.
Mitchell switched off the dim light bulb and, before he left for work, embrace
d them into a prayer.
*
Early the following morning a black government car drew level with the Midland and Scottish railway station directly opposite a drab-looking mansion. It was an ugly Victorian building surrounded by fifty-five acres of meadow and trees. Fifty miles from London, it was safe from German bombs. The car was stopped by a Royal Military Policeman to allow the passengers who had alighted from the train to cross the road. The two men in the car watched the stream of men and women as they headed towards the mansion and the clusters of low temporary buildings that surrounded it.
‘More arriving every day,’ said the older of the two. Like the man sitting next to him, Colonel Alistair Beaumont was in civilian dress, but looked more formal, like a businessman or the senior civil servant he was; he dressed as befitted his age. The younger man who shared the car was Major Michael Knight: he was thirty-seven years old and, although Beaumont outranked him, his demeanour was one of calm self-assurance in the presence of his superior.
‘Literature dons and women who are brilliant at crossword puzzles. Publishing executives and even rare-bookshop owners. They’re a motley lot. Thank God,’ said Knight.
‘Eccentric, some of them,’ said Beaumont.
‘Some of them. Not too off the wall, I hope. Pyjamas, slippers and trout flies in their hats is as far as I’d like to see on that score.’
Beaumont craned his neck to look past Knight. Another steam train sat on a separate track, its boilers hissing. ‘Is that it?’