by David Gilman
Mitchell escaped the crush of the train and walked unhurriedly towards the American Hospital. He suppressed the sense of urgency which demanded he quicken his pace but could draw attention. After fifteen minutes he stood opposite the main building. He lingered briefly, watching the coming and going of people into and out of the hospital. The street was quiet as he strode across to the side entrance where they used to smuggle downed aircrews into the hospital and from there south to Spain on the escape route.
He pushed through the swing doors and found himself suddenly facing an old concierge. He wore a faded jacket, and a scarf and mittens against the cold. A veteran’s medal from the previous war was pinned to his lapel. Another act of French pride in the face of an occupying enemy. He recognized the man from years before but hoped that the elderly man would not remember him now that he was clean-shaven. Anyone who was not a close acquaintance could no longer be trusted. Henry Mitchell must not be known to have returned to Paris.
‘Eh? M’sieu?’ grunted the elderly man, peering over the top of his spectacles and putting down the folded newspaper rather too quickly, which made Mitchell think he might be reading one of the news sheets put out by an underground press. Mitchell’s sudden appearance had flustered him. Perhaps, Mitchell thought, wearing an overcoat and fedora made him look like a French policeman. He glanced down at the newspaper and then back to the worried-looking concierge.
‘What news?’ he said gravely. ‘Have the Germans stopped eating sausages?’
The old man’s jaw dropped but Mitchell quickly followed his question with a smile. The concierge guffawed with relief. ‘Be careful, m’sieu, there are those in the hospital who would report such words.’
‘But not someone who fought them last time.’
‘No. Not someone who did.’ He coughed and cleared his chest and then studied Mitchell again.
‘Do I know you? There’s something about you that seems familiar.’
‘No, I am new in Paris.’
‘Uh-huh. Well, this is not the main entrance.’
‘I know. I am looking for a friend. One of the surgeons.’
‘I see,’ said the veteran. ‘His name?’
Mitchell hesitated.
‘M’sieu, the Germans leave us alone here at the hospital. I have been here since I left my regiment back in ‘18. These Americans have stayed throughout. We are a family within these walls. I cannot let strangers in who might be intent on causing harm. For all I know you are a jealous husband looking for the man who screws your wife when you are at work and wish to inflict violence on her lover.’
‘Or I could be someone who has bandages and medicines to sell to friends who are desperately short of supplies.’
‘Ah, in which case it’s best I don’t know who it is you wish to see. Such knowledge can be dangerous.’ He lowered his head to his newspaper letting Mitchell walk past through the service area. The ducting and water pipes on the ceiling led Mitchell towards a labyrinth of underground corridors but he knew where he was and turned up a set of stairs that brought him to the medical staff offices. He stepped cautiously into the corridor. The wards where nurses attended patients were at one end. Mitchell crossed the corridor and opened the door with a plaque that told him that F. Burton MD was its occupant. He stepped inside and a grey-haired man of fifty wearing a doctor’s coat looked up from his desk, pen in hand as he studied a report. Burton was caught unawares but before he could challenge the intruder Mitchell grinned.
‘Hello, Frank. It’s been too long.’
‘I’ll be damned,’ said Burton and quickly rose extending his hand. ‘Harry.’ He waved a finger across his own clean-shaven face. ‘The beard. You shaved it. Nearly didn’t recognize you. Come along, sit down. How wonderful to see you.’ He lifted the telephone receiver. ‘I’m not to be disturbed. I’m in a consultation.’ He opened a drawer and took out a bottle of cognac and two glasses. ‘When Jean Bernard came to me and said an Englishman had sent him I felt sure you were back in town.’
‘He’s here? You managed to help him?’
‘Yes, he told me everything. What a dreadful situation. He’s fine. I have him here for three days a week. We kept a number of our beds for the French railway workers who are caught up in air strikes and injured. He’s ideal. And then I send him across to colleagues at the Hôtel-Dieu. Lot of French patients there and they are short of doctors. Now, come on, I want to hear everything.’
Mitchell took a sip of cognac. ‘I was supposed to be flown here but my plane was shot down. There’s too much to tell, Frank, but as Jean Bernard has told you, it was hell for an awful lot of people. Though I don’t imagine Paris has been immune to terror.’
Burton nodded. ‘Last year was particularly bad. Near enough fifteen thousand Jews rounded up. They held them in the Vélodrome d’Hiver stadium until they were put on the trains. The stench from the stadium was appalling. No food. No water. They even arrested patients at the Rothschild, no matter how sick. They separated children from their mothers. Dear God in heaven, Harry, it was inhuman. The Germans use the gendarmes a lot of the time, but the end result is the same. They were shipped off to the concentration camps. You’ve heard the rumours? How many are being murdered?’
‘Yes.’ Mitchell sipped the cognac. ‘It doesn’t make sense. The Germans are sending thousands of Frenchmen as forced labour to Germany. Why would they be killing so many Jews? You would think they would rather use them as labour here in the city.’
Burton shook his head. ‘Racial laws. God only knows, Harry. But they’re shipping all our food out of the city and that’s damned near starving everyone here. Parisians are struggling. Health issues alone have increased the mortality rate – forty per cent higher, it’s been, over a decade. Tuberculosis cases have doubled. There’s so little food available. You look around and you see people who’ve thrown off weight as if they were dying. Infections are rife. And the psychological effects of malnutrition undercut any desire to strike back at the enemy. Thanks to the Red Cross we manage to keep a meagre flow of medicines coming in.’ He sipped the cognac. ‘It could be worse, I guess.’
‘And the Germans leave you alone?’
Burton nodded. ‘Any Americans allowed in the city have to report to a local police station every week. The Germans check on us; they usually send high-ranking medical types who would be keen to make this a military hospital for their troops, but we manage to fool them. Every bed is occupied, all two hundred and fifty, and that stops the Germans from sending any of their men here. When we get internees sent to us we keep them as long as we can. You’ve seen the army Kommandantur across the road? Well, they’re keen not to interfere with us. We’ve a damned great red cross on our roof and that keeps the Allied bombing away.’ He grinned. ‘We’re helping protect the goddamn German army. As I said, we’re desperately short of supplies of course, but we manage. We’ve hundreds of patients and staff to feed so we dug up the gardens and planted vegetables and of course we buy on the black market.’ He shook his head. ‘Enough of that. My word, Harry, it’s good to see you.’ They clinked glasses. ‘You know, back when you made your escape and we didn’t hear, we thought you’d bought it. Suzanne and Danielle went to ground but Suzanne worked with us until, oh, nearly a year ago now. She moved to another part of the city.’ Burton handed Mitchell a generous tipple. ‘So, you’re back to find them?’
‘Frank, Suzanne was executed by the Gestapo.’
Burton’s glass was arrested halfway to his lips. ‘Harry, I am so sorry. I didn’t know. And Danielle?’
‘She’s in La Santé as far as I know.’
Burton’s face fell.
‘I know,’ said Mitchell. ‘The Gestapo might have killed her already or sent her to one of the camps.’ His stomach tightened as he spoke the words. It was impossible to erase the images that plagued him.
‘Harry, I don’t have any contacts in the prison. This past couple of years since you’ve been gone…’ He shook his head. ‘We lost a lot of people.’
Mitchell saw in his mind’s eye those who had defied the Germans. ‘Marguerite? Luc? Professor Albert? Madame Masson?’
Burton shook his head. ‘Dead or scattered. Mauriac is alive. He runs the escape route down near Lyon. Things got too hot for him here.’
‘He’s a good man. You still have my old feeder lines open?’
‘Yes, and we have added more. But, as I said, getting more difficult by the day. The Germans are offering a fifty-thousand-franc reward for any downed airman; we know of only one betrayal and the Resistance shot him, so punishment like that exerts some sense of retribution. But the Nazis are offering ten times that amount for a captured British agent.’
‘Money has a way of blurring patriotism,’ said Mitchell. He thought for a moment. ‘What about Louis Crillon? He was a genius at getting people out.’
‘Crillon is in Spain for when we take the airmen across the Pyrenees. But the others, well, some have scattered, some are missing. We work in very small cells now, Harry. A handful only at any one time. Trust is something in short supply.’
‘Do you know of a wireless operator by the name of Ory, Alain Ory?’
‘No.’
‘He’s in hiding somewhere. Seems he escaped when Suzanne and Danielle were taken.’
‘When you left a lot of the organization crumbled. People were scared. You know too much, Harry. If they catch you they can still root out a lot of people who helped us.’ Burton poured them both another drink. ‘You were a big fish, my friend. Still are. So, can you tell me why you’re back in Paris – other than to try and find Danielle? I’m assuming there’s more to it.’
‘I’ve a handful of armed résistants with me and an English wireless operator.’
‘A new circuit? You’re going to harass the Germans here?’
‘Yes, it’s called Gideon. It would help if I could find at least a few from the old cell.’
Burton shrugged. ‘There are those who will help hide you and the girl if things get rough. Not the men; it’s too dangerous. The Germans penetrated some of the groups. We can only trust those we know and even that… well, we never know. It’s a huge risk. I’ll do what I can.’
‘Thank you. And, Frank, my cover name is Pascal Garon and I’m beginning to think there are too many people who know that. I could do with another identity card. I can get my photo taken at a department store’s Photomaton, but if Mauriac is in the south then who do you have as a forger?’
‘There’s a young photographer here in the city. His father was a railway worker we treated. He’s the best source we have. He tried using solvents to erase the Juif stamp for many of the Jews when his people were trying to get out of the city. He couldn’t make it work so he started forging a complete document from scratch. He’s making fifty or more a week and we get a handful. He has a way of getting cardboard and paper that looks original and then watermarks it and treats it with some kind of dust that ages the document. And then he makes a police stamp. It’s how we get the downed airmen out.’
‘Can he make me new papers?’
‘Harry, we are all on edge these days, and that slows things down a helluva lot. It would take time. There are so many plainclothes men on the street. The Special Brigades, the detectives, the Gestapo, informers. They pick up one suspect and the next thing you know twenty people are up against the wall or dozens put on to the transport trains. I can ask.’
‘No, he has enough forging cards for those who really need them. I’ll come back to you when I have to, if that’s all right?’
‘Of course, and if it becomes urgent we can press him.’
‘Frank, I’m looking for someone on the run. Alfred Korte. You know about him?’
‘The name, yes. But if he’s in the city I don’t know where.’
‘There was an English agent here trying to get him out. Korte’s important. I need to find him. The agent said he had found him a hiding place in one of the bookshops but it’s since closed.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘I checked on my way here. The place is boarded up. I had hoped Korte would have been safely tucked away. Who would know what happened to the people in the bookstore?’
‘I’ll give you the name of someone in the American Library. She would know the booksellers in the city. The Germans continually visit the library so be careful.’ Burton scribbled on a desk pad, tore free the page and handed it to Mitchell, who glanced at it and tore it into tiny pieces.
‘Burn it. If I keep it and get stopped then she would be implicated.’
Burton sighed and lit the pieces in the ashtray. ‘Stupid of me, Harry. I’ve been cooped up in here too long. Not thinking of the risks of being on the streets.’
‘If I find him I have to get him out in a hurry. Can you help me?’
‘South?’
‘No, I’ll bring in a Lysander. But I’ll need people to look after him until I can arrange it.’
‘Find him and bring him here. Then we’ll plan what’s best.’
There was a tap on the door. Burton hid the glass, Mitchell did likewise as the doctor opened the door. A French nurse stood there with an armful of folders. ‘The medical reports you wanted, doctor,’ she said, glancing past Burton to the man in the overcoat.
‘I told my secretary I wasn’t to be disturbed,’ said Burton brusquely.
‘I apologize, doctor. I came straight from the ward.’
‘All right. Thank you,’ said Burton, taking the folders. The woman left and he dumped the casework on his desk and swallowed the remains in his glass. ‘Come on, let’s go up on the roof. I need a smoke and I’ll tell you more about the woman at the library. It’s information that’ll help. You never know who’s listening at the door these days.’
34
Peter Thompson had been fine for the first hour of Mitchell’s absence, but then became increasingly tense as he paced the apartment, looking repeatedly out of the window on to the street below. When Ginny had set up her wireless for transmission he had helped her raise the aerial. ‘You won’t say anything more than what Pascal told you?’ he had asked, his voice laced with concern. Ginny had reassured him but saw him concentrating on what she was sending as she tapped out her coded message. He could not know her codes but it was obvious he understood Morse. She had done exactly as Mitchell instructed and sent the message without any embellishment and then quickly closed down her wireless set. The German radio direction finder vans continually patrolled the streets and she knew that if she lingered too long on the key then they could locate her.
‘We’re safe here,’ she told him. ‘Safe as can be anyway.’ She smiled encouragingly.
‘You’ve no idea how bad it can get,’ said Thompson, trying to roll a cigarette, the tobacco spilling from his trembling fingers.
Ginny tried to calm him and quickly made a cigarette for him, licked the paper and handed it to him. Thompson sucked gratefully on the lit cigarette and nodded his thanks. But then the confines of the room began to close in on him.
‘I have to phone my wife,’ he said.
‘Charles!’
He turned. The small automatic in her hand was levelled at him. ‘You must do as Pascal instructed.’
‘There’s a phone box down the street. I’ll return as soon as I’ve spoken to her.’
‘No!’
In that moment Thompson seemed to relax. ‘And what are you going to do? Shoot me? You would bring every gendarme and German patrol in the area down on us. And that’s the end of everything.’ He turned quickly and closed the door behind him. For a moment she was flustered and then pulled on her coat and shoved the pistol into her pocket. On the landing outside she saw him disappearing down the stairs and followed him.
As she reached the street she looked left and right and saw the tall Englishman making his way to the next intersection. She walked briskly after him, not knowing what she could do to restrain the frightened man or to coerce him back to the relative safety of the apartment. As she hurried she gripp
ed the gun tightly in her pocket. She suddenly realized that she had left her identity card at the apartment in her haste to follow Thompson. No identity card and a weapon in her pocket. It was incredibly stupid to have taken the gun on to the street and the quickening fear of what would happen if she were stopped suddenly became a reality. Two German lorries appeared at the intersection, the soldiers quickly blocking the street. Thompson was already beyond them. She turned but there was no escape. Three police cars had driven up behind her and gendarmes spilled from them, cordoning off the street. The Parisians were used to spot checks and those that had been caught between the two roadblocks resigned themselves to their journey being interrupted. The gendarmes herded them towards the soldiers who, three or four at a time, checked identity cards in an organized and efficient manner, moving people through so the Germans could go on to their next impromptu checkpoint. One of the men argued with a soldier, who gestured to his comrades to escort him to the back of the lorry. He resisted and was quickly subdued. Fear murmured through the waiting crowd. Ginny’s mouth dried as she looked around desperately for any escape route. She made a quick decision. If they arrested her then she would shoot her way clear and run for it. Several people ahead of her were checked and passed through and then she was next. She was beckoned forward. There was no demand for her identity card, only the outstretched hand of the German soldier. She smiled apologetically.