by David Gilman
‘My child ran out of the house and I left without my card. He’s just over there, around that corner. I only wanted to get him back inside. You know how kids are.’
‘Hey,’ the German called to one of the gendarmes. ‘No identity card here. Says she has a kid on the loose.’ He raised one hand to summon the policeman while the other gripped her arm.
Ginny’s heart threatened to burst and her legs began to tremble. She shifted the automatic slightly, testing to see that she could withdraw it quickly. She smiled at the young German. ‘Is there a problem? Really? I live just down the street. Please, I don’t want my son running free, he’ll get into all kinds of mischief.’
‘You wait here,’ said the soldier as one of the gendarmes pushed his way through the crowd.
‘What is it?’ the Frenchman asked.
‘Woman says she lives on this street and that her kid’s run off.’
‘Officer,’ said Ginny plaintively, ‘I just want to get my son. I ran out of the house without my identity card and –’ The grim-faced gendarme seemed unimpressed but as he was about to question her the low wailing of a siren soared across the rooftops, its evolving pitch warning of an air raid. In that moment the soldiers reacted, shouting orders as the lorries’ engines coughed into life. ‘The Métro!’ shouted the gendarme. ‘Take cover!’
Everyone scattered. The nearest Métro station was two hundred metres away. Trenches had been dug across Paris since the beginning of the war to offer shelter and there were some of these across the intersection by a small square, but they were useless against heavy bombing and would only protect against flying shrapnel. Paris had so far escaped being bombed by the Allies except for industrial areas but now the sullen roar of heavy bombers approached. Ginny ran in the direction Peter Thompson had headed. Streets were emptying as people ran for the trenches and Métro. She saw a public telephone booth. A long-haired youth swung open the door and made an urgent attempt to rip away the sticker on the window banning Jews from using the telephone. The sirens became more insistent and the crump of falling bombs sounded from across the city. The youth’s defiant gesture gave way to self-preservation and he ran for cover. Ginny scoured the area and saw Thompson hunched in a doorway. She scanned the clear sky: there was no sign of the bombers; they were delivering their ordnance further away towards the river. She squeezed in next to the cowering man and put her mouth close to his ear.
‘You run from me again and I will shoot you and damn the consequences. When the all-clear sounds you’re coming back to the apartment or I’ll kill you here.’
She was surprised at how threatening her words were. But she meant them.
*
Mitchell and Burton had no sooner reached the vantage of the hospital roof than the sky darkened with the approaching bombers. Sirens wailed as anti-aircraft guns boomed, their shell bursts puff-balling the air around the approaching aircraft flying west of the hospital as they delivered their payloads over an island in the River Seine. The droning thunder of the American Fortresses’ engines beat down from the crowded sky. Mitchell felt rather than imagined the tension within each of the B17s whose ten-man crews were flying in a hail of bursting shrapnel. The chattering gunfire from the aircrafts’ gunners was already lacing the sky with intermittent tracer.
‘It’s the Renault car factory, Harry. They make tanks and armoured vehicles for the Germans. My God, it’s a big one. There must be a hundred planes. The factory will take a pasting.’
The two men were transfixed by the erupting bombardment and the aerial attack as German fighter planes soared up into the sky to shoot the B17s down. The heart-racing drama roared on as specks of men tumbled into the sky from their stricken aircraft. Most were arrested by a billowing parachute canopy. One parachute barely opened as flames shredded the canopy and the unfortunate airman plunged to his death. Two aircraft screamed earthward; three more soon followed, smoke and flames searing the torn fuselages. The sound of the tortured engines thrust Mitchell back to his own terrifying experience in the aircraft that had brought him to France. He realized he was gripping the edge of the wall with such force that the rough masonry had torn away some of the skin from his fingers.
‘Poor bastards,’ said Mitchell.
‘I’d better get back,’ said Burton. ‘There’ll be casualties coming across the river into the other hospitals but we do what we can to help. And I have people who bring in the airmen on the run so we we can get them out.’
Mitchell turned for the stairs with Burton and clattered down the steps to the corridors below where staff and patients lined the windows looking up at the aerial attack. The hospital was far enough away not to be in danger and Mitchell knew that the Allies’ flight charts would indicate the hospital’s position. It wasn’t Paris that was being bombed; it was the industrial plants that fed material to Germany. The scale of the bombing raids gave hope that the Allies were getting ever closer to invading mainland Europe, but the cost in lives was increasing.
Burton ushered Mitchell into his office. ‘Harry, I’m sorry, I need to speak to my staff now,’ he said as the anti-aircraft guns boomed in the distance, but placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘There’s still time for you to catch up with your friend.’
*
Jean Bernard stepped from behind the drawn curtains around a hospital bed and caught Burton’s beckoning gesture. The surgeon opened the door of his office and let the refugee doctor step inside.
‘Pascal!’ he said when he saw Mitchell at the window, watching the first wave of shadows in the sky wheeling for home. The two men shook hands.
‘I can’t stay long, not with this air raid going on. Are Juliet and Simone all right?’
‘Yes, yes, we are fine, thank you. Simone is already in school and once Juliet gets her papers in order at the Préfecture my sister says she can help her find work.’
‘No trouble getting here?’
‘None. And you?’
‘Well, it got interesting for a time. I’d like to come and see you all at your sister’s apartment. Would that be all right?’
‘Of course. There’s a phone in the entrance outside the concierge’s room. Why don’t I give you the number?’
‘Do you trust the concierge?’
Jean Bernard shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
‘Then that’s too dangerous.’ He turned to Burton. ‘Can I phone the hospital to speak to him?’
‘Of course. Ask for me and I’ll bring him to my office.’
The sound of the air raid faded and the all clear sounded.
Mitchell pulled on his hat. ‘I’ll leave the same way I came in.’
35
Once the all clear had sounded the administrative staff at Avenue Foch headquarters poured back up the stairs from the basement shelter. The huddled mass, mostly of men in their drab green-grey uniforms, wriggled like a giant caterpillar. They were laughing, fancying themselves veterans of war for having survived an air raid that had been miles from the city. Someone below barked out an order for silence and for them to get back to their desks. Koenig could not help feeling a slight sense of superiority over them. When the air-raid sirens started he had been with Leutnant Hesler in the signals room on the floor below. As others ran for the shelter he and the dedicated signals man had stayed put. Even Koenig knew how to gauge the distance of exploding bombs and Hesler had said that enemy agents often used air raids as a cover to send their signals. It was usually the one time the radio detection vans were not in operation, but Hesler had given strict orders that his men continue their sweep. As Koenig and Hesler waited patiently in the radio room the muted bombardment had continued but no further signal had been noticed other than the one that had been sent that morning.
There were men, Hauptmann Martin Koenig decided, like himself and the clever young signals officer, who served their country loyally but who did not agree with many of the methods used to defeat their enemy. Hesler was as much a part of those who hunted the Reich’s enemy as was the SS
major who scoured the countryside with his Hunter Group. And he, Koenig, was efficient in bringing statistics and numerical accuracy to those captured, tortured and slain so that records were in good order and the facts could not be distorted. Both men were an essential part of the German war machine but neither were required to see the end result of the skills they brought to bear.
Koenig waited patiently until Hesler pulled off his headphones and shook his head. It was doubtful that the wireless operator in the city would transmit any more today, he told Koenig as he handed him the report he had made on the earlier wireless activity.
‘She’s good, captain,’ Hesler acknowledged.
‘And you’re certain it’s a woman?’
‘As sure as I can be. There’s a lightness to her key transmission. A certain… feel. We’ll catch her eventually. They all make a mistake sooner or later and that’s when we’ll get her.’
*
Hauptmann Koenig waited while Stolz looked at the report.
‘Leutnant Hesler couldn’t locate where this transmission came from?’
‘No, sir, but it’s a new wireless operator. Hesler is almost completely certain it’s a woman. And he tells me that the British are very poor in their security. We know that they instruct their wireless operators to routinely place a deliberate mistake in their transmission – usually a transposition of a letter by a few places – to make sure that their wireless operator is not in our hands. This is something we can do nothing about so we run the risk of the British questioning any of our false transmissions. Yet they often miss or ignore the mistake. It will be their downfall, colonel.’
Stolz smiled. ‘Not everyone is as fastidious as you, captain, but I agree, British arrogance makes them careless. Has Leutnant Hesler kept requesting London for a meeting with their agent?’
‘Yes, sir. Every afternoon at Café Claire.’
‘Very well, we must play this out as long as we are able. This message that Hesler picked up specifically mentioned Gideon again and Pascal, which means Pascal – or, as we hope him to be – Mitchell and this other man, Gideon, are here together.’
‘Gideon is not a French name, sir. If it’s associated with Pascal it might be a cover name or a group he’s establishing.’
‘Are you certain, captain?’
‘Well, no, not certain, colonel. But the name denotes destruction. Gideon slew the Midianites.’
‘Koenig, I don’t know who the Midianites are or where you get this kind of information from’ – he raised a hand quickly to stop Koenig from explaining – ‘and I don’t want to know. But it is a fair assumption. So, let us think of it as being this Pascal’s group. It’s a start at least. The SS Hunter Group hasn’t found anything, so what I want you to do, Koenig, is bring that Milice inspector who sent us his reports, what was his name? The one from Saint-Audière.’
Koenig took a moment to recall the man’s name. ‘Inspector Paul Berthold.’
‘Yes, that’s him. Get him to Paris. We need a description of the man he interrogated and then we set him to work here with the Milice and Brigades Spéciales. Let’s flush this Pascal out. Tell Hesler that he must keep transmitting and asking for London to arrange a meeting. Finding this agent might be easier than we thought. If our ruse to bring the Englishman Mitchell back into the city has worked then London has given him this new wireless operator for a specific reason.’ He opened his desk drawer and took out the sheaf of brown folders. Choosing one he opened it and fingered aside some of the clipped documents. Finally, he settled on the information he had searched for. ‘Koenig, the woman Suzanne Colbert was not part of any known terrorist cell. The wireless operator Alain Ory was working with an English agent who has disappeared. Perhaps dead. Perhaps fled.’ He raised his eyes and smiled. ‘Better the former rather than the latter, but either way we are missing vital pieces of information by not having him in our custody. The traitor Alfred Korte is somewhere in this city. One lonely old man who has information that Reichsführer Himmler is desperate to secure. Given the number of disparate French Resistance units in and around the city would it not be reasonable to think that they would send an agent and wireless operator here to co-ordinate the groups? No – because they are at each other’s throats most of the time. They turn on each other like dogs after a bone. London has sent these people to find our German traitor. And if they are prepared to risk more agents’ lives then they must have information as to his whereabouts. We capture this Pascal and fortune – with help from Leitmann – may smile upon us and give us the man the Reichsführer wants.’
As Koenig walked back to his office two Gestapo men dragged a man up the stairs. He had already been beaten; blood matted his hair and stained the side of his neck. His legs gave way on the final flight up to the fifth floor and the interrogation rooms. One of the Gestapo men cuffed him hard against the side of his head to urge him on. How stupidly brutal these men were, Koenig thought, pressing himself back against the wall to allow the terrified man to be dragged past. The poor wretch was barely able to walk and so the thugs beat him harder. Moments later Leitmann skipped up the stairs two at a time. He grinned at Koenig.
‘Is the colonel in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s this?’ Koenig asked, indicating the stricken victim being hauled upstairs.
‘We got a tip-off that a résistant from a terrorist cell in the south was securing a safe house for an agent.’
‘Who warned you? The colonel’s informer?’
Leitmann shrugged. ‘Who knows? Anyway, we got him.’
‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to have him followed and then when the agent was in place you could have hauled in the fish rather than the bait? Or don’t you and your strong-arm men have the brains to figure that out?’
Leitmann scowled at the insult. ‘Koenig, go back to your ledgers and leave the real work to those of us who aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty. By tonight he’ll talk. And by tomorrow we’ll scoop up the agent.’
The Gestapo man pushed past him. Koenig calculated the odds whether this résistant had anything to do with Pascal being in the city. Coincidence could play a vital part in capturing an enemy agent. And the coincidence in this instance was lessened by the man being betrayed by an informant in the pay of the SD and Gestapo. Koenig looked back down the corridor to where Leitmann had stepped into the ambitious colonel’s office. The Nazi had vowed to sweep up resistance in Paris and as far as Koenig could see the fear that Stolz and the Gestapo had created was working. Stolz would rise ever higher in the ranks and the likes of Leitmann would follow in his wake. A sudden cry of pain echoed down the stairwell from the top floor. He crossed himself and muttered thanks to God that he was nothing more than an accountant in the service of these monsters. And tonight the fear he felt at being so close to the ruthlessness would melt away even further when he lay with Béatrice Claudel. He was quickly falling in love with the young Frenchwoman. She made no demands on him and asked for nothing. Her affections towards him, he had determined, were genuine and when they made love she wept with pleasure. How beautiful it all was and how far removed from this violence.
36
Peter Thompson sucked nervously on a cigarette, hunched over, his foot incessantly tapping. Ginny leant against the galley kitchen’s counter watching as Mitchell spoke to him, his voice lowered, like a doctor with a patient. When Mitchell had returned from the hospital she had told him what had happened. Mitchell had restrained his anger. He realized that if he was to get this deserter to help him he would have to help the man control his fear, and venting his own frustrated impatience would cause more harm than good. Mitchell tossed Thompson one of the packs of cigarettes that had come in on Ginny’s Lysander.
‘Thank you,’ Thompson said, sniffing the packet for the rich tobacco aroma.
‘The reason I asked you to stay here in the apartment with Thérèse was that you are very important to the success of this mission,’ Mitchell told him.
‘I had to see if my
wife was safe.’
‘And did you speak to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you did not speak to anyone else?’
‘Like who?’
‘Is your phone a party line?’
‘No. I had it for the business. For the garage.’
‘And she’s all right?’
Thompson shrugged. ‘As well as she can be.’
‘So are you ready now to help me find Alfred Korte?’
Thompson nodded.
‘Good man,’ said Mitchell, and placed a friendly hand on his shoulder, glancing across at a stern-faced Ginny who raised her eyebrows. She obviously thought the Englishman calling himself Ferrand was feeble. ‘But next time don’t risk it. You could have been killed.’
‘I was a long way from the air raid and my papers are good.’
‘I meant by Thérèse,’ said Mitchell.
*
Mitchell and Thompson travelled west from the ninth to the eighth district of the city. The American Library on Rue de Téhéran had stayed open during the German Occupation. French subscribers depended on the library for its periodicals. But the library also supplied books to those Americans whose luck had run out, who were no longer allowed to reside in the city and who had been interned.
Thompson was told to stay on the street and keep watch for any German patrols who might visit the library while Ginny enquired about opening a subscription. If anything untoward happened while Mitchell was questioning the contact Burton had given him then Thompson and Ginny were to stage a domestic argument to distract the Germans.