by David Gilman
61
It was obvious to Ginny when they stepped inside the apartment in the Fifth Arrondissement that Juliet Bonnier’s feelings for Mitchell were deeper than when she and the Frenchwoman had previously met. Between then and now something had changed. Her eyes shone with an intensity that Ginny had only witnessed between her own mother and father. She felt a pang but could not determine what it meant. Was it jealousy? Had she spent so much time with Mitchell living on the edge that she felt a proprietorial claim on him? She dismissed the irritation and greeted everyone in the apartment. Their relief at seeing Mitchell again told her how much he had achieved in the short time he had been in France. He had led a group of survivors across hostile territory, saved two families, re-established his contacts in Paris and destroyed a vital train shipment. He had also inspired loyalty in the men he commanded, two of whom might have been led astray by another’s foolish attack but they had taken the risk because of the courage and confidence instilled in them by his leadership. They could not be condemned for their actions and if, as Mitchell intimated, they had been betrayed, then their deaths might help reveal a traitor.
Madame Tatier playfully castigated Juliet who was embracing Mitchell. ‘Don’t leave the poor man standing in the hall. Jean, stand aside and show Mademoiselle Thérèse to a chair. Juliet, you can let him go; he won’t fall down.’ She urged everyone into the apartment. ‘Juliet, let’s get Pascal and Thérèse something hot to eat and drink.’
Ginny watched Mitchell as Juliet, beaming with pleasure at seeing him again, pecked his cheek and turned for the kitchenette. Ginny noticed that Mitchell seemed uncertain how to respond. Was that barely noticeable reticence a sign of guilt? Mitchell must still feel the keenness of his wife’s death. Perhaps this Frenchwoman had eased herself into his heart. She dismissed the thought as Mitchell laid out the new identity cards. Jean Bernard opened and closed each one.
‘They are perfect. I don’t know how you got them.’
‘Never mind. Did you get the tickets from Dr Burton?’
‘Yes, they’re here,’ said Jean Bernard, reaching for them on a side table. ‘But there was a problem.’
‘Tell me.’
‘We were supposed to leave from Gare d’Austerlitz for Irún,’ said Jean Bernard.
Mitchell felt the uncertainty of a plan going wrong and looked quickly at the tickets in his hand. ‘Gare de Lyon?’ he said quietly.
‘Dr Burton said the Gestapo and plainclothes police were swarming all over Austerlitz. They seized several members of the Resistance.’
‘Did he say who was taken?’ said Mitchell.
‘He only mentioned one name: Pierre Dupin. Do you know him?
Mitchell shook his head.
‘Anyway, he said he was sending us a different way, and that you would know the people down in Perpignan.’
Mitchell studied the tickets carefully. Everything had to be correct because any errors meant questioning by the authorities, especially if the Germans were doing a swoop on the main railway stations. ‘Gare de Lyon for Perpignan tomorrow morning. Nevers, Moulins, then a delay at Vichy on to Clermont-Ferrand. You won’t get to Langeac until the following night. You will need to make the connection but…’ He studied the tickets. ‘It’s awkward, but you won’t get out of there for another twelve hours. Make sure you keep everyone together. Don’t let the children run off – no doubt they’ll be bored – but you must not let them be questioned away from you.’
‘Is anyone going to meet us before we get to Perpignan?’ said Juliet.
‘No. Make certain that if any of the trains are delayed or you have to change that you stay on the same route as on the tickets. Nîmes, Montpellier, Béziers and Narbonne where you will be contacted and escorted to Perpignan and from there across the border.’ He looked at the two women in the kitchenette. ‘It’s not as quick a journey as I had hoped. I’m sorry, but Frank Burton knows what he is doing and if this longer route is safer then so be it. Four or five days on the train means you must use the food tickets tomorrow and buy enough food for the week.’
‘Monsieur Pascal, no one in this room has ever lived on the left bank. We do not know how to get to Gare de Lyon from here,’ said Marie Tatier.
Mitchell realized that had been the one thing he had not considered. Marie Tatier was the only Parisian among the others and like many Parisians knew her own arrondissement but little elsewhere.
‘The park leads to the river but you can’t go through because the gates will be locked. I’ll draw you a map. It’s easy but you must allow an hour or more. Better to get to the station early. Split up. Juliet and Simone and then Jean Bernard, Madame Tatier and Marcel. There’s a German anti-aircraft battery on the Quai Saint-Bernard. Stay to the right of the park and you’ll avoid it once you reach the river. When you are on the other side the station is on your right. You won’t miss it.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Jean Bernard. ‘Don’t worry about us.’
‘You will have to be firm with the children. They must learn their new names.’
Ginny noticed Mitchell’s brief look of concern. ‘Why don’t you stay and take them? I’ll go back to the apartment. I have to make my schedule and then I’ll move in here with the radio tomorrow night as you planned.’
‘We have too much to do tomorrow,’ said Mitchell.
‘There’s time,’ said Ginny and smiled to try and give Mitchell the assurance she felt he needed. ‘You were right, it doesn’t matter about the transmission today, tomorrow will still be all right.’
‘We will be fine,’ added Juliet. ‘You have done more for us than we could have hoped. You’re a wanted man, Pascal. No need to risk being picked up in a random sweep. Please, don’t even consider it.’
Mitchell was torn. The moon was good for another couple of nights and he had to get Alfred Korte out of Paris as soon as possible, but a part of him wanted to ensure that those who had saved him when his aircraft crashed were given their final chance of freedom. The family or the mission? He glanced at Juliet. No matter how close they had become he still had unfinished business in Paris. He could not allow his emotions to dictate his actions. Yet it was bad enough that as soon as they left this apartment the two families would be on their own.
‘We’ve missed curfew. We’ll sleep here and leave early tomorrow. Thérèse and I will walk to the river with Jean and Madame Tatier with Marcel, and then fifty metres behind Juliet and Simone. There will be others going to work so we won’t bunch together. If I’m stopped then everyone should cross the street and keep walking.’
Mitchell saw the look of relief on Marie’s face. Juliet smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said, touching his face. The gesture made him feel closer to her than he could have imagined only weeks before. He picked up the tickets and identity cards to check them again. He knew it was a distraction to let his feelings settle. For a moment he was shocked to realize that what he felt for her was something more than desire.
62
Early next morning, as Mitchell guided the two families along Rue Buffon towards the river, Standartenführer Heinrich Stolz’s irritation at being drawn from his bed and Dominique’s sensuous embrace turned to a surge of elation when the voice at the end of the telephone told him that a failed terrorist attack had resulted in the capture of one survivor, a man who claimed to be Pascal Garon. That man was now held on the fifth floor at Avenue Foch. Stolz’s desire to return to bed and spend an extra half-hour entwined with Dominique was quashed by a greater need to confront the terrorist. He washed, shaved and dressed with renewed urgency.
At Avenue Foch, he bounded up the stairs to his office. Koenig wasn’t there.
‘Where is Hauptmann Koenig?’ he said to one of his aides.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ came the reply.
‘Find him and bring me my coffee,’ said Stolz, stripping off his belt and sidearm. He picked up the telephone receiver: ‘Interrogation,’ he demanded of the operator. As the ringtone sounded, the aide returned with a
small black coffee and sugar. Stolz swallowed it in one as he looked out of the window at the clearing blue sky. ‘Leitmann. You have Garon?’
‘He claims to be, sir,’ said the voice from the fifth floor.
Stolz laughed. ‘Well, if he knows the name, he knows the man. It’s a start, yes? I’m on my way up. Have you seen Koenig this morning?’
‘No, he’s probably still got his leg over his whore.’
‘I’ll forgive him this once,’ said Stolz.
All was quiet as Stolz reached the fifth floor; there was no sound of punishment being inflicted. When he stepped into the room he saw a broad-shouldered man whose manacled arms stretched across a small table. One side of his face was badly bruised, his eye swollen closed. Dried blood on his shirtsleeve mingled with fresh blood seeping from a wound in his shoulder. Clearly, the burly jacketless interrogator in the room had been working on the wound. He stepped back as Stolz entered the room.
Stolz wrinkled his nose at the stench. ‘For God’s sake, get him to a wet cell and hose him down.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Leitmann. ‘His bowels went when we opened his wound. His legs have gone and if we drag him it’ll go everywhere.’
‘Then get some air in here,’ Stolz snarled.
Stolz circled the wounded Maillé as the thug opened the window a crack, barely enough to allow the stench to escape, but it was better than nothing. No one would dare open a window unless a senior officer ordered it. No matter what vile smell stifled the room, victim and interrogator usually endured it together. Stolz picked up one of the batons that the torturers used to pulverize muscle and bone and pushed it beneath Maillé’s chin.
‘You have nothing to smile about,’ said Stolz as Maillé bared his teeth.
‘A man doesn’t mind the smell of his own shit. And it’s better than the stench of you bastards,’ said Maillé.
Stolz replaced the baton on the table, among a host of other implements used for causing pain. ‘Has he told you anything at all?’
‘Slowly,’ said Leitmann. ‘It took some time, but he explained how he survived the plane crash and made his way here into the city with others in his group.’
‘You have names?’
‘A couple. One died in a raid on a petrol depot. He’s confessed to destroying the turntable and organizing the airstrike on the train. I sent men out before dawn and we found where he had hidden the petrol. His accomplice died last night in the warehouse attack. We’re checking the rest of the information.’
‘What about his identity card?’
Leitmann shook his head, opened his cigarette case and offered it to Stolz, who eased out a cigarette and lit it, glad to inhale the pungent smoke rather than the odour in the room. ‘He had no card.’
‘Perhaps that is too convenient,’ said Stolz. ‘Where’s Inspector Berthold? He can identify Garon.’
‘I’ll send word to where he’s billeted,’ said Leitmann, lifting the phone receiver.
Maillé peered at them with his good eye. ‘I am Pascal Garon.’
‘No, I suspect you’re a French peasant with an accent as strong as the stench of your own excrement,’ said Stolz. ‘But you clearly know enough about him and his activities here.’
‘Shit is shit in anybody’s language. I’m no educated man like you, colonel. But I know my own name.’
‘Then who and where is Henry Mitchell, the Englishman. His code name is Pascal.’
‘The Englishman? Come on, give me a cigarette, eh? The Englishman is dead. You killed him at the swoop at the hospital. I run the Maquis de Pascal. Mitchell was sent to organize us.’
Doubt creased Stolz’s face. He looked at Leitmann. ‘Could it be?’
‘You’re going to kill me anyway, I know that. There’s nothing left of my circuit now, so give me a pad and pencil and a cigarette before you finish me off and I’ll spill the beans.’ He snorted congealed blood and phlegm and spat on to the floor. Stolz stepped back. ‘Besides, I can’t take much more of this,’ he said. ‘Water and a cigarette and I’ll tell you where the radio operator is hiding.’
‘We know that already,’ bluffed Leitmann.
‘Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are we still transmitting, eh? Give me the paper and pen and I’ll tell you everything. I can’t sit in my own mess any more. Better to be dead than to be like this.’
Stolz looked at the interrogator. ‘Fetch a bucket of water and disinfectant.’ The interrogator left the room. Stolz blew out a plume of smoke as he continued to study Maillé. ‘The wireless operator the British sent. It’s a woman.’
‘Asking or telling?’ said Maillé. ‘If you’re not going to give me a cigarette then I’m not talking.’
Leitmann pressed his thumb into Maillé’s shoulder wound. The mechanic bellowed, eyes wide, and sucked in air. ‘Fuck you! All right! Do your worst. I made you an offer. For a lousy cigarette. Well, fuck you. And your mother. And your sister!’ He groaned again and slumped on to the table.
Leitmann raised his hand to strike him again, but Stolz’s gesture stopped him.
‘He’s too tough and he’s too weak. Take the manacles off him. Give him a cigarette. And water.’
‘Sir?’ Leitmann queried.
‘Just do it. He’s not going anywhere. Let’s get this information.’ He picked up a pad and pen from the interrogator’s table as Leitmann pulled back Maillé’s head and placed his cigarette between the man’s cracked lips. Then he stretched across the half-conscious man and released the manacles. As he gathered the chains in his hands Maillé lunged with unexpected force. His supposedly lifeless legs braced as he grabbed Leitmann, forcing him on to his heels, powering him backwards, knocking aside the table. Taken by complete surprise at the man’s animal strength, Stolz stumbled clear as Maillé hurled Leitmann at the window. The force of the assault shattered the glass and frame and Leitmann’s back caught the window ledge. Such was Maillé’s strength that Leitmann lost his balance and tipped backwards through the window, arms flailing, a strangled shout as his body plummeted down the floors. It took only seconds for Stolz to react, the cry still ringing in his ears. He snatched at Maillé, who punched him, but the SD man had known combat and pain and he head-butted his prisoner with enough force to loosen the injured man’s grip. Maillé was pressed against the opening and with furious determination he snatched at Stolz’s collar in an attempt to pull him to his death too, but his wounded arm betrayed him. His fingers curled around Stolz’s Knight’s Cross and tunic ribbons. Then Maillé wrenched himself free and deliberately threw himself backwards into the void.
Stolz gasped for air as he peered down into the street below. Two shattered bodies lay sprawled in pools of blood. The impossibility of the moment shook him like a man emerging from an artillery bombardment. He stumbled to the door and flung it open.
‘Koenig! Where are you? Come here, man!’ he bellowed as he clung to the bannister, his voice echoing down to the main entrance where startled members of staff gazed up at him.
From the floor below a familiar face peered up.
‘Koenig is under arrest,’ said Bauer.
63
Stolz peered down from his office window as he wiped the blood from his face. German medical staff were gathering up the bodies of Leitmann and Maillé, putting them into an ambulance as soldiers cordoned off the pavement and street. He flung aside the wet towel and buttoned his tunic, fingering the frayed threads where his campaign ribbons had been ripped away. The adrenaline from the struggle had ebbed and he faced Bauer with renewed hostility.
‘You have arrested a member of my staff. That goes beyond your remit, Bauer. Whatever charge you have concocted to try and hurt this department and my staff will not go unpunished. The Abwehr has no jurisdiction over the SS, the SD or the Gestapo. Confine yourself to military intelligence. Get out of my office and release Hauptmann Koenig. Do it now and I will take the matter no further.’
Bauer showed no signs of being intimidated. ‘You have not asked on what charge?’
>
‘I know the man. He’s a damned harmless accountant. You’ve used your agents to entrap him somehow.’
‘No, I did not use my people. I used the French.’
Stolz opened a desk drawer, took out a bottle of cognac and poured himself a stiff drink. He lit a cigarette. ‘What? Don’t be stupid. I would know about it. There is no one. Brigades Spéciales? Milice? They are in my pocket. They would not dare conduct an unauthorized operation against any member of my staff.’
‘And of course I knew that, so I approached contacts I had in the Sûreté.’
‘You are an old fool, Bauer. We closed French Intelligence down when we occupied France. I wager your so-called contacts are bitter men, cast aside and, like you, full of enough animosity to help you create false charges.’
Bauer smiled. ‘You forget that they were re-organized as the Bureau of Anti-national Activities and that we gave them certain duties to act on our behalf against their own kind, specifically the communists and members of the Resistance.’
‘And not against the German security service.’
‘I agree. But, fortunately, they are both dedicated to their cause and assiduous in their duties – and, as I said, they are, if you like, brothers-in-arms to us in the Abwehr. You, the SS and the Gestapo have little to do with them, whereas we have always maintained cordial relations.’ Bauer lit a cigarette. ‘And what they discovered was that Hauptmann Koenig’s lover, one Béatrice Claudel, was not only an active member of the communist Resistance but also an abortionist. Two for the price of one, if you get my gist.’
Stolz barely hesitated at the revelation of Koenig’s involvement with a woman whose background was suspect. There was no evidence being offered. It was an accusation easily rebutted. ‘And you suspect Koenig of aiding and abetting abortions? He’s a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic. And he loathes the atheists. You’ll have to do better than that.’
‘Oh I can,’ said Bauer and placed the bundle of documents he had found in the girl’s apartment in front of Stolz.