Deed of Glory (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  The patrol had understandably not believed Turner’s story when he walked up to them. His German was good and his confidence huge—but a German officer masquerading as a British airman? More likely the airman was trying to bluff his way out of the trap he had walked into, so they took him back to the guardpost. The front door of the house opened on to a passage and a door on the left led to the office. The Feldwebel, Luger pistol in a holster on his belt, sat behind a table with a telephone. A chair stood before it and Turner sank into it.

  The Feldwebel stared and one of the soldiers bawled in outrage at this insolence but Turner said, “I’ve told your boys already: I am a German officer on special duty and I must report to my superior. Telephone him and he will confirm what I say.”

  The Feldwebel hesitated. If this English airman was trying to make a fool of him—He asked, “Who is he?”

  Turner told him and the Feldwebel’s face tightened. He used the telephone and it took him a minute to get through but then he made his report, listened. “Yes…I see…of course.” He handed the receiver to Turner. “Headquarters for you—sir!”

  Turner spoke curtly. “I have the name. Yes, it was quick but they gave me a half-chance so I took it. The name? Catherine Guillard, Rue de Saille.” His French was good enough to pronounce it correctly. He repeated it slowly, listened, said, “Yes. You have it right.”

  He hung up and smiled at the Feldwebel, now standing respectfully. The patrol were at attention. Turner said, “At ease. You were doing your duty.”

  The Feldwebel relaxed slightly, quickly produced a cigarette when Turner demanded one and lit it for him. Turner asked, “Have you got a drink?” Now he could have one; he reckoned he’d earned it.

  “I have bottles of good German beer cooling in a bucket outside.” The Feldwebel snapped at the soldiers, “Back on patrol, you lot!” He went out through a door to the rear of the house.

  The patrol clattered out and Turner followed them to the door. “No hard feelings, boys. You acted correctly. Well done and good night.”

  They muttered their respectful thanks and tramped off up the street.

  It seemed the air raid was over. The night was still, peaceful, though a red taint to the sky showed where a fire burned in St. Nazaire. Turner leaned on the door post and drew on his cigarette, feeling the tension draining out of him, elation taking its place. He had done it!

  As he stretched his arms out, yawning, a young man—hardly more than a boy—appeared before him as if from the ground at his feet. He saw the pale face, wide eyes, and the sudden flicker of silver that was a knife.

  Jacques had heard the name, Catherine Guillard, and the address, and had seen the respect of the German soldiers for his ‘British airman’. Now he struck blindly, ignorant of how it should be done, but sick with shame that he had been duped and hysterical with rage. He held the knife by his side and thus chanced to drive it upwards so that its point entered below Turner’s rib cage. The man gasped, stumbled back under the blow, Jacques stumbling with him, and when Turner’s back hit the wall Jacques’ forward-falling weight drove the knife in deeper. Turner slid down the wall and his deadweight tore the knife handle finally from Jacques’ grip.

  The boy turned and ran.

  His mind was a blank. All he could see was the face of the airman, mouth sagging open and eyes wide, slipping down away from him. But he found himself at the doctor’s house, had enough presence of mind to run to the back of it and hammer on the door there.

  The doctor came almost at once; the raid had kept everyone awake. He stared at Jacques, whose hands and jacket front were stained with blood, and pulled him inside. “My God! What has happened to you?”

  “I am all right. But I have killed a man, a German spy. I must telephone. Please!”

  The doctor recognised a state of shock when he saw it. “Are you sure the man is dead?” There was the blood but he could not believe this boy had murdered.

  Jacques nodded, put a red hand to his mouth as his stomach heaved, controlled it. His face ran with sweat but it was cold. “I must telephone. Please!”

  “In here.” The doctor led him along the hall and into his surgery, pointed to the telephone and Jacques seized it. There was shouting in the street, coming closer. The doctor muttered, “A moment.” He went out of the room, opened the front door and saw the soldiers hurrying up the street, carrying a loaded stretcher.

  In the surgery Jacques heard a voice on the line and said, “I want to speak to Henri.”

  The doctor appeared behind him at the door of the surgery, put a finger to his lips, switched off the light and retired, closing the door. Jacques stood by the desk in the darkness with its smells of antiseptic, waiting in an agony of dread, listening to the tramping boots and German voices in the hall outside. He heard the doctor say, “No! Not in the surgery! Bring him in here! Put him on the table!”

  *

  When the bar closed the owner switched off the lights and went up to his bed, but he left Henri sitting in the darkness at a table by the telephone. The air-raid kept him alert but when it was over he dozed with his head on his arms. He woke when the telephone rang and grabbed it. He thought he recognised Jacques’ voice but asked, “Henri? Who wants him?”

  He waited for some seconds, hearing distant background voices, then came: “I am his nephew from the country.”

  That was the correct identification; it was Jacques. “This is Henri.” Then a vehicle ground down the road outside, Henri thought it probably a fire-engine, and he put a hand to the ear not at the receiver to shut out the noise. “Speak up, for God’s sake!”

  Jacques raised his voice, “The mute is sick!” That was the code phrase for trouble and ‘mute’ was the cover word for an airman on the run who could not speak French. Then words spilled out of Jacques as the horror returned, all rules of security forgotten: “He told them where to find Geneviève!” He was shouting now. Sobbing. “I killed him!”

  Behind him the door opened and the light was switched on. The Feldwebel stood in the doorway while out in the hall his soldiers were manoeuvring a stretcher into the opposite room. The doctor’s voice came heavily, “But this man is dead.”

  The Feldwebel was a kindly man with a wife and a teenaged son of his own. But he lived among a hostile people, aware of their hatred and he had seen a man bloodily murdered. He stared at the young man smeared with blood, his hand sticky where it held the telephone. Then he drew his Luger from its holster, flicked off the safety catch, fired twice and the boy collapsed over the desk.

  Henri, standing in the dark and empty bar, heard the shots and let the receiver fall. He blundered across to the door, knocking over tables, and when he was out on the street he ran. But it was a long way to the Rue de Saille, and there would be German patrols to be evaded in between.

  *

  Hauptmann Engel sat behind his desk, chair pushed back and booted feet on the blotter. He gazed sightlessly past their gleaming leather at the window that looked out over the St. Nazaire basin to the U-boat pens, now covered by a black-out curtain. A sentry stood by the window with his rifle, at ease but unmoving, and the eyes under the steel helmet looked carefully away from Engel, stayed fixed on the opposite wall.

  Engel had poured the glass of cognac an hour before when the air-raid started but it stood untasted. He had watched the liquid shiver as the few bombs fell and the shock-waves ran away under the building. He only moved to balance his note-book on top of the glass to keep out the dust the bombs set falling finely from the ceiling. The bombers had gone and it was quiet now, the surface of the cognac was still and the dust no longer filtered down.

  There was slow pacing in the suite on the floor above. Engel listened to it and wondered if the Resistance would try for Dönitz. They should, and if they did he was ready for them. There was no sentry outside the locked front door but one stood inside it and another at the window of the room across the hall. Two men were with the Feldwebel upstairs, two more sat on the floor of the Citroën o
utside, with orders to see without being seen, and five lay in ambush in the buoy-yard on the far side of the road. The massive buoys brought ashore for repair gave plenty of cover. Since the house was sandwiched between other buildings and its rear wall backed on to a warehouse, if the Resistance came their attack would have to be made head on. Engel had made his preparations and now he waited.

  Private Pianka waited also, stretched out on a bench by the door, snoring softly, his cap over his eyes against the light. He woke when the telephone rang, lifted the cap and peered across at Engel, who reached out a long arm to the instrument. “Engel.” He listened for only seconds then replaced the receiver and swung his booted feet to the floor, was out of the chair and limping towards the door. “We go!”

  Pianka scrambled up and followed him. In the hall the guard there stamped to attention then hurried to unlock the front door. The Feldwebel appeared at the head of the stairs and Engel snapped up at him, “We’ll be back soon! If they come just follow your orders!”

  The front door slammed behind them and they heard the key turn in the lock. As they piled into the Citroën the two men in the back eased up from their crouched positions into the seats. Pianka started the car, switched on the hooded headlights and drove forward as Engel pointed. Pianka asked, “What’s going on?”

  Engel answered, “We were right about Turner. He sang to Grünwald.” Pianka swore and Engel went on, “But our little bird sang, too. That was him on the phone. So hurry.”

  Pianka guffawed. “Two traitors are better than one!”

  “Ours is saving his neck.” Just twenty-four hours before, Horstmann had stood in the Abwehr office, handsome face working in panic as Engel read out in a rapid monotone the reports made by Grünwald’s housekeeper on his affair with Grünwald’s young wife, Ilse. Then Engel told him, “If Turner contacts your chief you will tell me at once, with full particulars. Or Grünwald gets this report.”

  They drove rapidly along the side of the St. Nazaire basin, past the minesweepers and tugs tied up there, turned right and crossed the bridge over the lock at the Southern Entrance. The Citroën surged up the gentle gradient of the Place du Bassin and then the Rue Ville-es-Martin. The streets were dark, deserted, the sky tinged red from a fire in the port where a bomb had fallen. At Engel’s order Pianka swung the car left and stopped in the entrance of the Rue de Saille. The street was quiet and empty: they were in time. Engel told the two in the rear of the Citroën, “The third house on the right. Get around the back at the double.”

  They scrambled out of the car and ran off into the darkness, rifles held across their chests. Pianka drove on quietly, then stopped when Engel said, “This one.” They got out and Pianka lifted his fist to hammer at the door but Engel snapped, “We haven’t time for that!”

  Pianka set his shoulder to the door and burst it open. He stumbled in after it then ran up the stairs, his way lit by the torch held by Engel limping behind him. When Engel had first come to St. Nazaire he had put a tail on this girl and learned exactly where she lived and everything else about her—or so he had believed. That thought taunted him now. There were two doors on the landing and he went without hesitation to one of them. Light showed beneath it. Engel knocked, the door opened immediately and Catherine Guillard, fully dressed, looked up at him. Her face was pale but she seemed calm. No different, still with that look of cold hostility, even now when she must know her game was over.

  He said harshly, “You’ve made fools our of us!” He stepped inside, lifted the suitcase that stood by the door and hefted the weight of it: full. He set it down, snatched the girl’s coat from a hook and threw it at her. He told Pianka, “Hold her.” He switched off the light, crossed to the window, ripped aside the screening curtain and opened it. He called to the men below, “All right! Go back on foot! And at the double!”

  He limped out of the room and down the stairs, Pianka hurrying after him, hustling the girl along by the arm. Engel climbed into the back of the Citroën, Pianka shoved Catherine in after him and slammed the door. As he slid in behind the wheel another car swung into the street, tyres squealing as it turned at speed. It raced down on them and halted with a screech of brakes. Grünwald jumped out and strode up to the Citroën, leather coat hanging from his shoulders, Horstmann at his back. Pianka started the engine as Grünwald stooped at the side of the car, peered in at the girl then glared at Engel. “This woman is Mademoiselle Catherine Guillard?”

  Engel nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Then she is my prisoner!”

  Engel answered quietly, “No. She’s mine.”

  That quietness should not have deceived Grünwald because he knew very well this tall officer with the cold eyes. But his own men were crowding around the car now in their dark overcoats and carrying their pistols, so he grabbed the handle of the car door and would have wrenched it open.

  Then, still quietly, Engel leaned across the girl to place the muzzle of his Luger in Grünwald’s face. The Gestapo man let go the handle and stepped back. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  The barrel of the Luger was rock-steady. Engel said, “I’m always having accidents with these things.”

  Grünwald was breathing quickly, and thinking. He demanded, “How did you know where to come?”

  “A little bird told me.”

  Grünwald swore: “That treacherous swine of an Englishman!”

  Horstmann’s face was stiff with fear but Engel did not enlighten Grünwald, and told Pianka instead, “Drive on.”

  Grünwald shouted as the car pulled away, “I will go to the General!”

  Engel answered, “You can go to hell! The sooner the better!” He sat back as the car swung round and accelerated away.

  He was conscious of Catherine Guillard sitting stiffly in the other corner. He did not speak to her. Pianka drove down to the Southern Entrance and across the bridge, along the side of the basin and so to the Abwehr office. The guard opened the front door and Pianka ran the girl inside and held her standing before the desk. Engel sat down behind it, took off his cap and smoothed his hair. He looked across the desk at the girl.

  “You have two alternatives. If you talk to me I will pull some strings. I might be able to get you only a prison sentence, but I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Or Grünwald will take you away and when he’s finished you will talk to him. You will be glad when he shoots you.”

  Catherine Guillard could not talk, had to stay silent for as long as she could because the others, Henri and Jacques, needed all the time she could give them. She looked straight at Engel. “I don’t understand. Why have you arrested me?”

  Engel sighed. He had feared this.

  *

  Henri had arrived in the Rue de Saille with pumping heart and failing legs. He saw Engel’s car stopped outside Catherine’s apartment and knew he had lost his race, pressed into a doorway and watched Engel bring the girl out. Henri did not attempt a rescue; he was unarmed and he knew Engel. He saw the exchange with Grünwald, then saw Engel take Catherine away. Finally Grünwald and his men drove off at speed and Henri walked back quickly to his own apartment. Ironically, now that the crisis was past he met no German patrols: on his way to the Rue de Saille he had had to detour to avoid three. The sweat on his face and body turned cold. Once in his room his hands started to shake but he forced them to be steady as he set up the wireless again and strung the aerial around the picture rail. He sent the message again and again until London acknowledged: “Geneviève taken.”

  He packed up the wireless in the suitcase and lugged it down the stairs. In an alley at the side of the house was a lock-up garage where he kept the Renault van. He went in, dumped the suitcase in the back of the van, then propped the door open so he could see down the alley to the dark street. He sat in the van and waited.

  If he tried to leave St. Nazaire at night he would be stopped by patrols so he would wait for daylight when his papers would give him at least a chance. If Engel—or Grünwald—broke the girl before morning an
d came for him he would be awake, here in the van, and ready for them. There was a window at the back of the garage that opened into another alley and a safe house only two streets away with a contact with a man who drove a lorry in from Nantes to St. Nazaire and back every Saturday morning. He would take the wireless if he could, because in the Resistance such things were of great importance.

  He tried not to think about Catherine.

  *

  Engel waited. He had told the girl about the traitor, made it plain that she was betrayed, but she did not flinch. He had shouted in her face, “You are a leader of Resistance with a network of agents and a wireless to talk to London! I want to know the names and where to find them!”

  “I can give you no names. I don’t know what—”

  “When do the Resistance plan to attack this place?”

  He had thought he saw reaction then but all she had said was: “I know nothing of any Resistance plan.” And she answered his other questions, repeated again and again, with silence or: “I know nothing of that.”

  So now he waited, trying with the silence and the coldness of his gaze to will her to speak. In the stillness he heard the low voices of his two men returning on foot from the Rue de Saille, reporting to the guard at the door, going into hiding again in the Citroën. She had to tell him all she knew. How long had she been an agent? What information had she sent to London? Maybe she had caused the deaths of good Germans, his friends. Maybe she deserved to die. He shifted his gaze minutely. Nobody deserved to die as she would in Grünwald’s hands.

  He was conscious of the glass of cognac on the desk, still untasted. He did not touch it.

  This was not a soldier’s work. The girl was very pale and he could see the sweat on her face and running down from her hair though the fire was dead and the room cold. The general would stall as long as he could because he too did not like the Gestapo, but Grünwald would demand his prisoner with the weight of Himmler, head of Gestapo and friend of Hitler, behind him. Engel thought he might have until morning, no longer, to make her talk.