by Alan Evans
She smiled at him, “It was nice. I have not been so happy for a long time.”
“I’d like to see you again.”
“No arrangements, John, no letters.” She said that firmly.
He wondered if she had written to another man and then got the telegram: “Regret to inform you…” This war was almost as bad for the girls waiting at home as it was for the men at sea. He said, “All right. But next time I get leave—”
She stopped him then by kissing him, hard. He was not expecting that but put his arms around her and she leaned against him. After a moment she pushed free and walked quickly to the front door, it opened and he again glimpsed the figure of a man in the entrance lobby. She turned and waved, he saw the pale blur of her face and then she was gone.
He climbed into the taxi and went back to his hotel. The bar wasn’t open but he tipped the porter generously to fetch him a large whisky. The bribe, and his uniform, worked wonders: whisky was a rare luxury these days. He needed a drink. He did not want to go back to sea so soon. He knew that as soon as he got leave again he would seek out Catherine Guillard.
The porter returned soon afterwards and Ward gulped the last of the whisky, expecting to be told his taxi waited to take him to the train. The time was nearly five-thirty. But the porter said, “Telephone for you, sir.”
It was Joe Krueger’s deep drawl that came over the wire: “Glad I caught you, sir. You have a reprieve. The old girl won’t be ready for another twenty-four hours, and luckily they’ve put back the sailing of the convoy by that amount because they’re waiting for a couple of ships to complete loading. How’s the furlough?”
“Terrific! Thanks, Joe.”
Ward told the porter, “See if you can find me a room for tonight.” Once that was arranged he took a taxi and drove to Baker Street.
He paid off the taxi, pushed the button of the bell and heard it ring, muffled, inside the house. After a moment the door was opened by a man, tall and broad, heavily built, possibly in his forties. The black-out curtain of the cubicle hung down behind him but was not completely closed and a chink of light lit him, dimly.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to see Miss Guillard, please.”
The man hesitated. “She isn’t here, sir.”
“Oh!” That was a disappointment. Ward tried again. “Do you know where she’s gone? When she’ll be back? Did she leave a telephone number?”
“No, sir.”
The street was silent and so was the house. The man stood like a rock, unmoving, one hand behind the half open door, waiting to close it. Ward was suddenly uneasy. There was something bloody funny going on here. “What is this place? And who are you? That girl came in here barely two hours ago and I want to see her or be sure she’s all right.” There was quiet determination in his voice.
The man was still a moment longer then held the door wide. “You’d better come in, sir.” He closed the door behind Ward, pulled aside the blackout curtain and led the way into the hall beyond. “If you’ll wait a moment, please, sir.”
The hall was dingy, lit by a single light hanging low over a desk at one side. On the desk was a telephone, a small clock with a busy tick and a bell push that the man thumbed. Ward did not hear the ring but a second man entered immediately from a door at one side. He was younger than the first, thin and stooping. The first one said, “Gentleman wants to see Miss Guillard.”
The young one said, “Lieutenant Ward?”
“Yes. But how—”
The young man turned away. He picked up the telephone, dialled, waited, then said, “Lieutenant Ward is here, asking for Miss Guillard.” He listened, then: “Yes, sir.” He put down the telephone and looked at Ward. “Will you take a seat, please?” He gestured to a solitary straight-backed chair by the wall.
Ward asked, “How do you know who I am? And where’s Miss Guillard?”
He got only the patient answer, “If you’d like to make yourself comfortable, it’ll only be for a few minutes.”
“What will only be a few minutes? What’s going on? Has something happened to her? An accident?”
Patiently again: “I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything, Lieutenant, but someone else is coming who will.”
Ward did not sit down. The hall was about ten yards long from the blackout curtain to the foot of the stairs that lifted up to a landing. He paced the hall, back and forth. The young man stood at the foot of the stairs and the older one by the curtain that covered the front door. Now Ward could see that the younger one was in charge and the other was a guard. A guard! Ward checked in his pacing at the thought. Why a guard, in the hostel where Catherine lived? He did not ask, certain now that these two would not answer. He went on pacing, worried and puzzled, anger building in him, while the clock on the desk ticked away the minutes.
Finally he heard a car draw up in the road outside and the young man said, “If you’d like to go out, sir.” Ward looked at him from under black brows and the young man took an involuntary pace backward and said quickly, “It’s my superior. You’ll have to talk to him.”
Ward said deliberately, “If this is some smart-Aleck trick to get me out of here I’ll damn soon get in again, and God help the pair of you when I do.” He pushed through the curtain and the guard followed cautiously, opened the door and let him out, closed it behind him. Ward stood in the street once more, blinking in the darkness. A big car, its colour indeterminate in the night, was drawn up by the kerb. Its hooded headlights glowed and the engine ticked over softly. He crossed to it and saw a Wren sitting at the wheel, facing stiffly to her front. Then the back door opened and from inside the car a voice said, “Get in.” He recognised the voice’s owner: Rear-Admiral Quartermain.
Ward said, “I came here to see a Miss—”
“I know. Get in.” The voice was still quiet, not curt but demanding obedience. Ward climbed in beside Quartermain and closed the door. The car moved ahead and he saw a glass partition separated them from the Wren at the wheel.
Quartermain said, “I haven’t much time because I’m on my way to catch a train to Glasgow, but you deserve an explanation. You’ve been seeing Catherine Guillard. You were supposed to be going back to your ship tonight but instead you went to that house to see her—”
Ward broke in angrily, “Boston’s sailing was put back for another twenty-four hours so I came around to the house! I only took the lady back there a couple of hours ago but some tough who answered the door this time said she’s gone out and he wouldn’t tell me anything else! Who the hell are they in there? What are they?”
“I can’t tell you that. Except that they hold in their hands the lives of the men and women who stay in that house.” In fact they were men of the Special Operations Executive, the organisation that ran secret agents in occupied Europe. Their headquarters was in Baker Street and the house was one of several in which agents stayed. Quartermain went on, “Anyway, she isn’t there now.”
“How do you know? Where is she?”
Quartermain said quietly, “When Catherine Guillard landed in this country in 1940, I recruited her. Inside a fortnight she was back at her job in St. Nazaire, carrying on her normal life—but working for us as well. We’ve sent a lot of people back; she was one of the first. Yesterday she came to Richmond Terrace to see me—and afterwards bumped into you outside.”
It took time to sink in, for Ward to accept it. He supposed Quartermain meant that Catherine was some sort of agent, presumably working with the French Resistance. He asked, “Isn’t that—dangerous?”
Quartermain answered with bald truth, “Always.” He remembered her recent report on a Hauptmann Engel of the Abwehr who was in charge of counter-espionage, and a certain Herr Grünwald, an officer in the Gestapo. Dangerous. Very.
Ward asked, “Can I see her?”
“No.”
“You’ve already trusted me with secrets, for God’s sake!”
“Do you think I’d put her at risk?”
“No, bu
t you can’t see her. I sent her back to France tonight.”
3: Engel
The moon hung high in a sky sprinkled with cold stars and strung with cloud shredded by the wind. The big meadow lay in a bend of the Loire river and had been used for landings before. The three men who came to it in the night knew it of old. It was well away from houses and roads, was approached by a long, narrow, rutted track down which they pushed their bicycles. The grass was short, the ground firm and this night hard with frost, level and without rocks. There were no high trees around it. Thus a Lysander could set down no matter what the direction of the wind might be. Finding such a field had not been easy, but necessary. And worth it.
Henri, the leader, was a man of thirty-odd, not tall, not broad, unobtrusive. One of his companions was an agent going out and the other was his young assistant, Jacques. They halted and stood still with only their heads turning, holding their breath and listening to the night until Henri said, “Good.” They moved then, passing from the lane through a gate into the meadow, walking through the wet grass and pushing their bicycles to the low copse in the corner of the field. They leant the bicycles there and Henri looked at his watch. It had taken them an hour to reconnoitre the outskirts of the field and ensure that no German patrol lay in ambush. Now time was short. He said softly, “Hurry it up! Jacques?”
“I’m ready!”
His assistant unloaded three wooden stakes from the crossbar of his bicycle. Jacques was barely eighteen and fumbled in his haste and excitement.
Henri and Jacques walked out into the meadow, leaving the third man behind them in the shadows. Henri pointed downwards, Jacques rammed one of the stakes into the earth and Henri lashed a pocket torch to the top of it. They turned away and walked up-wind, Henri steadily counting his paces.
A hundred and fifty metres up-wind of the first stick Henri pointed again, Jacques pushed in a second stake and Henri tied on another torch.
They turned, walked out to the right for fifty metres, and set up the third stake topped by a torch.
Henri looked at his watch again and said, “Right. Get him.”
Jacques dashed away with the eagerness of youth, heading back for the man they had left waiting in the copse in the corner of the meadow. Henri walked back to the first stake. The three stakes formed an inverted L and Henri stood at the bottom end of it, looking up the meadow, feeling the wind on his face and listening to the thump of his heart.
Before the war he had worked for his father, selling and repairing farm tools. In 1939 he joined the army and in 1940 was wounded. He was in hospital in the south, that part of France not occupied by the Germans, at the time of the surrender. He was bitterly outspoken about the débâcle, but not for long. The British recruited him and from then on he held his tongue. They spirited him away to England, trained him as a wireless operator and in the late spring of 1941 parachuted him back into France with his wireless in a suitcase.
He held documents showing he had spent a long convalescence in the south before returning in 1941. He took over the agricultural repair business from his ageing father, and trundled about the roads of France in the same Renault van he had used up to 1939 and which had been ancient even then. Because of his work he had passes into all the restricted coastal areas. His father was dead now, and he had no other family. He had not used the van tonight because repairers of farm tools did not make calls at night. And besides, a bicycle was quieter and more easily hidden.
The network, SPINSTER as it was known to London, was a small one, consisting virtually of Catherine Guillard and Henri, her wireless operator, or ‘pianist’. The boy Jacques carried messages sometimes and was eager to do more. Henri had recruited him when doing a job at the farm where Jacques lived, but had his doubts about the boy. Jacques was devoted, loyal and they believed brave but he was also young, impatient and melodramatic. They called for him when he was needed and he had the telephone number of a bar in St. Nazaire where he could reach Henri in an emergency. And that was the network. Catherine wanted it small and so did Henri: the bigger the network, the bigger the risk.
Between them Catherine and Henri carried out occasional sabotage, cutting telephone lines or blowing up sections of railway track, minor damage that could be repaired in a day or so but that was grit in the German war machine, nevertheless. Far more importantly, they sent information.
So far they had killed no one. A German officer, Feldkommandant Holtz, had been killed in Nantes, just upriver from St. Nazaire, but they had no part in it, had known nothing of it. They believed, however, that the death of one German officer had not been worth the hostages shot in reprisal. They knew the time would come when the British and Americans invaded and that then they would have to use their hidden weapons. It would be their duty then, but now their duty was to survive, to watch and to inform London of what they saw. London had ordered Henri to meet tonight’s outgoing agent at a rendezvous and bring him here. He had never seen this man before and probably would not again.
Jacques returned bringing the agent, who was wrapped in a thick overcoat and carried a bulky briefcase. His breath, like theirs, steamed on the cold air. They waited, listening, softly stamping their feet, hands jammed into pockets.
Jacques said, “He’s late.”
Henri answered, “Only a few minutes. He’ll be here. They’re good, those airmen.” He thought, But—suppose flak got them? Or a night-fighter? With Geneviève aboard? He started to pray.
Then Jacques, youngest and with the sharpest hearing, said, “He’s here!”
He trotted away up the meadow, heading for the other torches. Now they all heard the low mutter of the engine and Henri’s head turned, fixing the source of the sound. He pulled his own torch from his pocket and flashed it in that direction, the morse letter H for Henri.
The aircraft was suddenly there, sweeping low and black towards the meadow. Henri flashed his callsign again and the signal-lamp below the fuselage of the Lysander winked in reply. The plane circled the field, its high wings, angular and strutted, silhouetted against the night sky. Henri switched on the torch on its stake beside him. Its reflector had been removed so it shone all around and not just upwards. At the top of the field Jacques lit one torch then sprinted across and lit the other.
The Lysander came in with landing lights burning, their glow spilling over the field and slipped over Henri’s head, so low he could see the extra fuel tank under the fuselage and the spatted wheels. The engine note dropped, it touched down and he heard the thump of its wheels. It ran on towards the other lights and halted between them. The landing lights were switched off and in the sudden darkness the Lysander was almost invisible. Then its engine note rose again as it turned and taxied back to the bottom of the meadow, turned again and stopped close to Henri and the outgoing agent, pointing up-wind.
Henri saw the head of the pilot in the cockpit inside the transparent canopy and ran in with the agent as the rear part of the canopy was slid back. The plane’s passenger climbed out and down to the ground. Henri pushed the outgoing agent up the steps leading into the fuselage, shoving him up into the tiny after-cabin before passing up his briefcase. The canopy slid shut and the beating tick-over of the Lysander’s engine quickened. The little aircraft moved forward, picked up speed with wings rocking on the uneven terrain, was airborne—was gone, leaving only a receding drone.
Jacques was collecting the stakes and torches. Henri gripped Catherine’s arm and urged her towards the copse. “It is good to see you. Good. How was it?”
“Interesting.” She thought of Jack Ward. “Very.” Then she added, “We have a job.”
“We’ve had a job for this last year!” He glanced at her, “But this is special?”
Catherine nodded. “I can’t tell you what it’s all about because I don’t know, but I have instructions. They take precedence over everything else. It’s work for us both.”
Henri shrugged, “So?”
“They want us to find a man. An engineer called Alain
Peyraud.”
“Where do we look?”
“They don’t know. Before the war he often stayed at a certain hotel in Paris. I think someone in Paris is checking on that; London will let us know if anything is found there.”
“Sometimes I think they are mad,” Henri grumbled. “One must have a place from which to start a search.”
Catherine said, “I think I will be able to tell you that—after I’ve been in to work on Monday.”
Henri said, “Be careful.” He was concerned for her, not for himself—even though if she were taken then his life would hang on her silence.
Catherine said quietly, “I will be careful. The sooner I am back at work and living my normal life, the safer I will be. That is our security—the daily routine. We must not change or they will suspect us. I will work hard as I have always done and I will also treat the Germans as I have always done.”
They walked on and into the copse. Henri said, “You take Jacques’ bicycle. It’s lighter than the other.”
Catherine smiled. “The young man is still eager?”
“He is still young. If he is lucky he will grow older.”
As John Ward had grown older. Catherine pushed the bicycle to the end of the track and rode off into German-occupied France.
That was in the early hours of Sunday morning. On the Monday she went back to her work in the dockyard office at St. Nazaire.
*
On Monday evening Hauptmann Franz Engel was returning along the quay to his place of work by the St. Nazaire basin. Across the water lay the huge caverns of the U-boat pens with their roofs of ten-foot thick, reinforced concrete. They were shadowed in the gloom of evening and in their dark interiors glowed the dim lights burnt by the watch-keepers on the boats.
Engel was very tall, very lean and straight. He had been posted to St. Nazaire in October, after being wounded in Russia. He swung one leg stiffly, and as he crossed the timbers of the bridge over the Old Entrance to the basin his boots beat out a dot-and-carry-one rhythm. His destination lay two hundred yards further on, between the basin and the Normandie dock. There was a long terrace of workshops and offices and near the far end of it, sandwiched between warehouses, stood a grubby, three-storied building. It was one of his offices. The other, where his clerks and his staff worked, was a mile away in a fine building in the new town, on the Boulevard Albert, close to the office of the Kommandatur in the College of St. Louis and looking out over the wide sweep of the estuary of the Loire. He saw his staff, and papers, when he had to, but he preferred to use his rooms here on the quay by the basin. Everyone else preferred things that way, too.