‘She is my wife’s niece, Major, who has come to stay with us because she has lost her home and the rest of her family. I cannot believe you think she is capable of . . .’ He shrugged as if the whole idea was beyond his comprehension. ‘Well, I’m not sure what you are thinking.’
‘I don’t think anything,’ Kurt said, ‘but the Gestapo believe she could be a British agent and I’m afraid that’s what counts.’
Grimly, Raoul nodded and, his tone laced with sarcasm, added, ‘And you are only obeying orders.’
‘Of course,’ Kurt said.
There was a long pause whilst the two men stared at each other, like two boxers at the start of a contest, but it was the German who looked away at last with a sigh. ‘Very well, if you are determined to be obstinate, there’s nothing more I can do. I was only trying to help Leonie.’
Raoul remained very still, his face impassive, but his heart was beating faster than normal as the major glanced towards the house. ‘Perhaps,’ he said softly, ‘your wife would be more co-operative.’
Fear sliced through Raoul like a knife, but from a reserve of strength and courage that even he hadn’t known he possessed, he managed to say, ‘You can talk to her, of course. Please come in. No doubt she will make you something to eat whilst’ – he glanced around at the soldiers tearing his farm apart once more; even now they were clomping through the farmhouse with their heavy boots – ‘your soldiers finish their searching.’
Kurt hesitated a brief moment. The elderly man was surprisingly calm. Was he a very good actor or did he really have nothing to fear? Kurt wanted to believe the latter. He wanted – more than anything – to believe in Leonie’s innocence.
To Raoul’s surprise, Kurt was surprisingly calm and almost gentle with Marthe, keeping the conversation light and talking to her just as a guest in her kitchen might do. Perhaps, Raoul thought shrewdly, the man thought the soft approach would work better with the frightened woman. Marthe could not hide her fear like her husband could, but Raoul hoped that the officer would think her anxiety was natural when enemy soldiers were tramping through her house and flinging her possessions everywhere.
‘Your niece? She is the child of your sister or brother?’
Marthe shook her head and for a brief moment, Raoul saw the look of triumph light the officer’s eyes. But Marthe spoke surprisingly calmly though Raoul could see her hands were shaking. ‘No,’ she said and Raoul held his breath, ‘it goes back a generation further. I was an only child.’ This Raoul knew to be the truth and the advice when concocting a cover story was always to use the truth when possible. Marthe managed to smile at the German as she pushed a plate containing two small portions of bread and cheese towards him. ‘Please help yourself, Major.’ Then she sat down on the opposite side of the table and went on. ‘We had lost touch with that side of my family – until Leonie appeared – but according to her, we have the same grandparents on my mother’s side.
‘And you believe her?’
Marthe looked at him squarely now. ‘Oh yes, she knew so much about the family. I doubt she could have found all that out.’
Careful, Marthe, Raoul was thinking. Marthe was feeling more confident now, but even that frightened Raoul. Don’t say too much, he was willing her.
‘And she’s lost all her immediate family?’
‘So it seems.’
‘Where did she live?’ His tone had sharpened a little.
‘In Boulogne-Billancourt.’
‘Yes – yes, I know that, but where – exactly?’
Marthe shrugged. ‘I have no idea. Like I say, we’d lost touch. I just know her home was bombed.’
‘If all her family were killed,’ Kurt asked reasonably enough, ‘why wasn’t she hurt?’
‘She wasn’t at home when it happened.’
‘Ah.’
After a few more minutes, Kurt left the house, signalled to his soldiers that they were done here, got into his car and was driven away.
Raoul put his arms around his wife, who was still shaking. ‘You did very well, my love, but you do realize they will be back, don’t you? Maybe again and again.’
Against his chest she nodded, but clung to him, gaining strength from him.
They were still standing like that, comforting each other, when a soft knock came at the back door.
Marthe looked up. ‘Emile?’ she whispered. Raoul smiled and stroked her hair. ‘Antoine,’ he reminded her gently. ‘I don’t think so – not in daylight – but I’ll see.’
He opened the door to a stranger, for he didn’t know Rob, so tight was the security followed by the circuit.
Rob glanced over his shoulder before saying, ‘May I come in?’
‘Of course, but just give me a moment.’ Raoul turned away and went back into the kitchen but left the back door open.
‘Marthe, there’s a stranger asking to come in,’ he whispered. ‘Be careful what you say. He may be working for the Germans.’ He returned to the door and invited Rob into the kitchen.
‘You are our second visitor of the day. We have just had the Germans searching our farm. What they hope to find, I have no idea. Marthe, please give the gentleman a cup of coffee. Well, it’s not really coffee,’ Raoul added with a grimace. ‘It’s a mixture made from chicory. Once, Monsieur,’ he added sadly, ‘I could have offered you wine. But not any more. They have taken it all. Now, how can I help you?’
‘My name is Bruce and I am Leonie’s contact.’
Rob sat down at the table and began to drink the hot liquid thirstily. ‘I saw the Germans here, so I’ve been hiding in your field until they left. I know Leonie’s been taken to their headquarters in Beauvoir and I need to get a message to Antoine urgently.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know who you’re talking about. Yes, Leonie lives here with us. She is my wife’s niece, but I don’t know anyone called Antoine.’
For a moment Rob stared at them and then nodded slowly and sighed. ‘Of course, you are quite right to be cautious. I could be working for the Germans. I am not, but I don’t know how to convince you.’
‘We live in dangerous times, Monsieur, and we don’t know who to trust and who not to,’ Raoul said. ‘Even people in the village and in the town, whom I thought I knew – counted some of them as friends before the war – are no longer to be trusted. We keep ourselves to ourselves. Luckily, living on a farm, we can almost be self-sufficient, even though,’ he added bitterly, ‘the Germans take most of our food.’
‘Please don’t worry any more about it,’ Rob said, standing up. ‘Thank you for the coffee.’
From the back door of the farmhouse, Raoul and Marthe watched the young man retrieve his battered bicycle from behind a hedge and pedal away in the opposite direction to the village and the town.
‘You know, Marthe, he could have been genuine, but I couldn’t take the risk.’
‘It’s strange he didn’t ask any more questions. I think if he’d been German he would have pushed a bit harder.’
‘Mm,’ Raoul pondered, feeling guilty now that he hadn’t helped the young man. ‘And another thing – his French was perfect but he spoke it like the British do, not like the Germans. Ah well, better to be safe than sorry.’
Raoul closed the door on what he hoped would be the last visitor of the day.
Thirty-One
Krueger took Beth to a small cell-like room, deep in the cellars of the Town Hall where the Germans had made their headquarters. They were quite alone – no one was there to witness whatever was to take place. And Beth knew, by the satisfied smirk on the man’s face, that something unpleasant was surely going to happen.
‘Sit,’ he commanded. Beth was trembling as she sat in the single chair in the centre of the room under a bright light.
In broken English the man said, ‘You will tell me the names of the circuit you belong to or I will be obliged to hurt you.’
Beth frowned, shook her head and shrugged. Krueger repeated his request in German and this time, Beth genuinely
did not understand him. At last he spoke in very poor French to which she replied in French. ‘I don’t know what you or the other man are talking about. I’ve told you who I am, where I’m from and how I came to live with my uncle and aunt.’
He struck her across the left side of her face so swiftly that she was unprepared for the blow, which knocked her off her chair. ‘You will answer my questions.’
Still playing the part of a young girl, Beth began to cry, though now her tears were real. The side of her face was still stinging and she wondered if he had broken her jaw.
He stopped and dragged her upright and pushed her back into the chair. ‘We’ve seen you riding around the countryside on your bicycle. You must be carrying messages.’
‘No, no, I’m not. I go to the village and the town on errands for my aunt.’
‘You should have everything you need on the farm. There should be no need for you to go anywhere – unless it is to act as a courier.’
At least, she thought, he doesn’t think I’m the wireless operator. Bravely, and perhaps foolishly, she said, ‘Supplying the Germans takes all our resources. We run short of necessities sometimes.’
The retort earned her another blow across the face but this time she was prepared for it.
‘I don’t believe you and I think you could be the one transmitting from this area. We know there is someone.’
Beth’s heart sank, but now she decided she could play the dumb schoolgirl. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Major Hartmann asked me the same thing, but I don’t understand. What sort of wireless is it? Uncle hasn’t got a wireless.’
‘Don’t play the stupid girl with me, because I think you are older than you are pretending to be. Eighteen or nineteen at least. You must be, to have been trained and sent out here.’
Beth’s tears flowed faster, her acting powers coming to her aid, but it seemed Krueger was not to be convinced. He squatted down in front of her, so that his cold eyes were on a level with hers. ‘You will tell me what I want to know or else you will suffer great pain and then you will tell me.’ He licked his lips almost as if he was hoping she would still refuse. He was clearly savouring the thought of torturing her.
Beth shook her head, the tears running down her face. ‘I don’t know anything.’
He stood up again, towering over her. ‘Take off your shoes and those ridiculous childish socks.’ As she obeyed, Krueger pulled a pair of pliers from his pocket. Again, he squatted in front of her and took hold of her left foot. ‘You have one last chance.’
Beth stared at him but said nothing.
Krueger pushed the pliers beneath the nail of her big toe and pulled.
In the offices above, Kurt heard her screams and shuddered.
When Beth came to – she had fainted at the excruciating pain – she found she was still in the little cell lying on a filthy mattress on the floor with a rough blanket thrown over her. But she was alone. Three nails had been pulled from her left foot and her toes were bleeding, the pain throbbing through her whole being. She sat up and buried her head in her knees. She had not been given any water either to drink or to bathe her injured foot. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious or what time it was now. All she could think about was, had she said anything? Had she given anything away? Were the Germans at this moment scouring the countryside to find Emile and his compatriots? And what about Monsieur and Madame Détange? Were they safe or had she in her agony – for agony it had certainly been – betrayed them? And had they found the wireless? She glanced around the small cell searching for her shoes, in the heel of one of them was secreted the cyanide pill.
It saddened her to think that she would have to end her life in this filthy cell. She would never feel Emile’s arms around her again or hear his voice; she would never go home to Grimsby, to smell the sea and watch for her father’s ship coming home or see the members of her family ever again. But she had volunteered for this dangerous game and if it meant the saving of others, the Détanges, Emile and all those in the circuit, then she must . . .
But her shoes were missing.
Now, as terror flooded through her, the door opened and Krueger entered. He stood a moment gazing down at her. ‘You are a very foolish girl to resist. It will only result in yet more pain if you do not tell us what we want to know.’
Beth breathed a sigh of relief. It sounded as if she had given nothing away. But what if . . .?
He crossed the floor and pulled her upright. ‘Come, he has more questions for you.’ He half dragged, half carried her up the steps and along corridors to Schulze’s office. She thought she saw a glimpse of Kurt in one of the rooms they passed by, though in her suffering she could not be sure of anything, but her resolve remained strong. She must say nothing.
‘Sit down, Leonie.’ Schulze’s voice was almost kind. ‘I am sorry we have had to treat you this way, but we now have proof that you are some kind of agent. We have found the cyanide pill in the heel of your shoe. So, now it would be better for you if you talk.’ He leaned forward, resting his arms on his desk as he said quietly, but menacingly, ‘Krueger can be even more cruel than he already has been and now we know you are not telling us the truth.’ He spread his hands in a helpless gesture as if the decision was totally out of his hands and in hers.
Despite the dreadful pain, Beth was still able to think clearly, to rationalize. She would bluff it out to the end, to the very end.
‘Now, shall we begin?’ Schulze said smoothly.
Beth stared at him, meeting his steely gaze with a calmness that she certainly wasn’t feeling inside. But she said nothing. She could no longer deny the presence of the pill hidden in her shoe and its implications. She could no longer deny being some kind of agent, but now she would say nothing. Whatever they did to her she would not speak.
After several minutes of questioning, Schulze shook his head, pretending sadness. ‘I am disappointed in you, Fräulein.’ He glanced up at Krueger waiting near the door. ‘You had better try again, and – if this fails’ – he looked back at Beth – ‘we will have no alternative but to put you against a wall and shoot you as a spy.’
Beth shivered, but still she said nothing.
Krueger’s treatment of her over the next few hours was brutal. He whipped her naked back, leaving inflamed wheals on her skin. He pulled out the remaining two toenails on her left foot and he subjected her to the ‘water treatment’, taking her almost to the point of drowning.
But in all that time, though she screamed in pain and gasped for breath, still she said nothing.
At last she was left alone in the cell, bleeding and sore and aching in every part of her tortured body. She lay curled up on the mattress, exhausted but unable to sleep for the pain.
She guessed it must be night now, for no one came near her. She had been given water, which she’d drunk thirstily, and food which she did not touch. She feared some kind of drug that would make her talk. She had to risk drinking the water for her throat was parched.
Through a haze of weariness, she heard the door open quietly and someone step into the room. She braced herself to be dragged from the floor, but someone was bending over her and whispering.
‘Leonie, it’s me. Kurt. I’ve come to help you. I must get you out of here. They are going to kill you if you do not talk.’
She wanted to say, ‘They’ll kill me anyway’, but she had vowed to remain silent. This could be another of their insidious tricks; getting someone she knew to work on her with kindness.
‘Can you stand?’ Kurt held out his hand and helped her to her feet. ‘We must be very quiet. Not a sound. I have a car outside in the backyard, but we have to get past the sentry. If we are stopped, I shall say I have orders to take you to Bourges for further questioning. You understand?’
Dully, Leonie nodded. No doubt the torture would be even more ruthless wherever he was taking her.
In the dim light from the lamp he had brought, he glanced down and saw her bleeding foot. ‘You poor girl,’ he
murmured and picked her up in his arms, carrying her out of the cell, up the stairs and along corridors to the courtyard at the back of the huge building. A sentry was posted outside the door. He stared at the major for a moment, but did not challenge his superior as Kurt placed Beth tenderly in the back seat of his staff car and then got into the driver’s seat himself. As he started the engine, the sentry stepped forward.
‘Would you like me to wake your driver, Major Hartmann?’
Kurt shook his head. ‘No, let the man sleep. This is something I must do myself. Orders, you understand.’
‘Of course.’ The man stepped back and saluted, ‘Heil Hitler!’
‘Heil Hitler,’ Kurt murmured half-heartedly as the car began to move.
In the back seat Beth rested her head against the leather upholstery and closed her eyes. Wherever he was taking her, she had no strength left to resist.
They travelled for some distance and then, through her semi-conscious state, she felt the car stop and heard him turn off the engine. She was aware of Kurt getting out of the car and walking a short distance and then banging on a door. Somewhere close by, a dog began to bark. After several minutes, the door opened and she heard him say, ‘I have brought Leonie back. You must get her away from here – into hiding – at once. When they find out she has gone, they will scour the countryside for they have proved she is an agent. They found a suicide pill in her shoe but she has refused to talk, hence the brutality inflicted upon her.’
And then relief and amazement flooded through her as she heard Raoul’s voice. ‘Bring her in.’
She felt herself lifted and carried into the farmhouse and set gently in Raoul’s chair at the side of the range.
‘Mon Dieu!’ the older man exclaimed. ‘What have they done to her?’
‘They are vicious thugs. I want you to know I have had no part in this. I believed in her innocence and I thought they would just question her and believe her too. It seems I was wrong – on both counts. I think, Monsieur,’ his voice cracked a little, ‘I have allowed my heart to rule my head.’ Now he turned from Raoul and looked down at Beth. ‘I don’t know how much you and your wife are involved, but you should expect a visit. Very soon.’
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