The Prisoner

by Robert Muchamore

  If it had been any other nun Marc would have said he was scoffing the food for himself and taken a caning as punishment. But Madeline was a caring person. She’d always had a soft spot for Marc and had been the only nun brave enough to regularly stick up for him during Director Tomas’s reign.

  ‘I found two Canadians,’ Marc said. ‘They’re dirty and hungry.’

  ‘From the Dieppe raid?’

  ‘I think so,’ Marc said.

  Madeline looked anxiously at the little boy in her arms. ‘I’ll put him to bed. You take the men to the oratory.’

  ‘You can’t tell anyone,’ Marc said. ‘There are notices up in Beauvais. Any men who didn’t surrender immediately after the raid will be shot as spies.’

  ‘We’ve dealt with this before,’ Madeline said firmly, and to Marc’s complete surprise. ‘Just do as I say.’

  Marc realised he was in an awkward position as he ran around the crumbling limestone wall surrounding the orphanage. He was a trained espionage agent, but he was only fourteen and the nuns would expect to take control of the situation.

  ‘Here,’ Marc said, as he handed the two big Canadians some food. ‘We’re going to the oratory, next to the convent house where the nuns live.’

  ‘Why are we going there?’ Joseph asked, as he greedily scoffed bread and cheese.

  ‘I’m not forcing you to do anything,’ Marc said, as he remembered a line he’d heard during his parachute training the previous year. ‘But if you’re going to get home, you’re going to have to trust someone. And if you’re going to trust someone, it might as well be a nun.’

  Joseph and Noah exchanged glances and muttered in English.

  ‘He’s just a kid.’

  ‘He had the smarts to save our bacon at the barn.’

  As far as Marc could tell, Joseph was a native English speaker, while Noah was native French. Marc put on his best attempt at a posh British accent and spoke in English for the first time in ages.

  ‘I can still understand what you’re saying, chaps.’

  The two Canadian’s found Marc’s accent hilarious and the joke broke the ice.

  ‘What was going on back there at Dieppe?’ Marc asked, as he led the two soldiers across a couple of hundred metres of open country towards the small convent house.

  ‘Whatever the plan was, it didn’t bloody work9,’ Noah said, smiling uneasily as he scratched three days’ stubble. ‘Heavy machine guns covered the beach from every angle. We landed within the first hour, but you couldn’t put your boot down without squelching a dead body. We spent three hours pinned at the base of a cliff, ran out of ammo and surrendered. We got captured, but took our chances and scarpered while the Boche were trying to work out where the hell to put all the prisoners.’

  ‘Tough break,’ Marc said.

  They’d now crossed behind the orphanage and reached the small convent house, which was home to the six nuns who worked in the orphanage and two frail old sisters who rarely ventured out. Next door was the small brick-built oratory where each nun retreated for several hours of daily prayer.

  Although he’d lived his first twelve years in the orphanage, Marc had never been inside the oratory, partly because the nun’s quarters were off limits, but mainly because it was surrounded by a graveyard for orphans which always freaked his younger self out.

  The octagonal prayer space was elegantly simple: whitewashed walls, with rough pine benches and a fireplace with a wooden cross resting on it.

  The teenage Sister Peter knelt in flickering candlelight, studying a Bible as Marc and the two burly servicemen stepped in. The smell of three days without a bath quickly overpowered the incense, and the light gave Marc his first proper chance to study the two soldiers.

  Joseph was stocky, touching thirty, with bushy, red hair and slightly sad eyes. Noah was a bigger man, no more than twenty but with huge hands and thighs as broad as Marc’s waist.

  ‘God be with you,’ Sister Peter said awkwardly. ‘You’re welcome here, strangers.’

  Sister Madeline was only a few moments behind and the two young nuns began fussing over the Canadians, bringing wine and more food, along with bowls of hot water so that the men could wash and shave.

  Given that they’d travelled ninety kilometres from Dieppe in under two days, the nuns gave most attention to the mens’ injured feet, popping blisters and pushing straw into their soggy boots to dry them out.

  While the nuns fussed over the soldier’s immediate physical needs, Marc hoped to help them in other ways. The silenced pistols and detonators he’d noticed on their belts indicated that they were part of a commando team rather than just regular soldiers.

  ‘You’ve done well to get this far,’ Marc said. ‘Do you have a plan?’

  ‘Got lucky a couple of times. Near misses, with sniffer dogs and checkpoints,’ Noah said, sounding every bit like a man who’d not slept in three days. ‘First priority was to get away from Dieppe as fast as we could. Walking mostly, but we did jump on the back of a truck for a while.’

  Marc nodded. ‘You’ll need civilian clothes to have any realistic chance. You’ve been able to sneak through countryside so far, but it starts getting built up not far south of Beauvais.’

  Joseph looked wary. ‘In uniform we can be taken as prisoners of war,’ he said. ‘We’ll be protected under the Geneva Convention. Once we switch into civilian clothes they can shoot us as spies.’

  ‘They might shoot you anyway,’ Marc said. ‘The Germans are pissed off about the raid, and you’re a long way from Dieppe already.’

  ‘Can you find us civilian clothes?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘We can all sew,’ Sister Madeline said brightly. ‘It’s identity documents that are the problem.’

  ‘You got mine easily enough when I came back,’ Marc pointed out.

  ‘Because we’re an orphanage,’ Sister Madeline said. ‘Children arrive here regularly and we have special arrangements at the identity office. Requesting documentation for two adults is more suspicious.’

  ‘It’s almost impossible to move around anywhere close to Paris,’ Marc explained to the Canadians. ‘You get stopped at checkpoints two or three times a day.’

  ‘A man gave us an address,’ Noah said, only for Joseph to give him a look that suggested he shouldn’t have spoken.

  ‘What address?’ Marc asked.

  ‘We jumped off the back of a German truck, and ended up near Amiens,’ Noah explained. ‘We knocked on doors, but everyone was terrified of helping us.’

  ‘The Gestapo send out spies pretending to be airmen, or allied soldiers,’ Marc explained. ‘If you help them, you’re for the chop.’

  Noah raised an eyebrow. ‘So how are you so sure we’re not Gestapo spies?’

  ‘I knew a Canadian once,’ Marc said. ‘Plenty of Gestapo officers speak French, but not with those kooky accents.’

  Joseph laughed. ‘Kooky, eh?’

  ‘Anyway,’ Noah said, continuing his story. ‘We finally found one old guy. He let us fill our canteens, gave us a little food, dry shirts and socks, plus the address for someone in Paris who he said might be able to help us.’

  Marc took a crumpled piece of paper from Noah and unfurled it. He was horrified that the name Chalice Poyer and an address of an apartment in the 18th Arrondisment of Paris had been written down uncoded. If the two Canadians had been captured, the address would have been raided and its occupants tortured.

  ‘Did the man say who Chalice is?’

  ‘He was a farmer. Keen to help, but scared out of his wits,’ Noah said. ‘He just said that the girl was connected to people who might be able to help us.’

  ‘He didn’t say how he knew her?’ Marc asked.

  ‘The old man had copies of this anti-Nazi newspaper,’ Joseph said. ‘Not even a newspaper really, just a typed sheet. I think he wanted to help us more, but he had a daughter and three young grandchildren in the house. His hands were trembling.’

  ‘I’ve seen anti-Nazi newspapers,’ Marc said thoug
htfully. ‘People leave piles of them in Metro carriages. Perhaps this Chalice is involved in distributing them.’

  Marc had made no effort to unearth any local resistance activity since he’d arrived back at the orphanage. Partly it was because he doubted there was any around, but mainly because he’d found a degree of comfort, with a tolerable job, plenty of food and his burgeoning relationship with Jae.

  ‘I met an RAF fellow in Britain who said there were lines of resisters that regularly help downed aircrew escape into Spain,’ Joseph said. ‘Do you think this girl could have links to them?’

  ‘That address could be anything from the home of a genuine resistance leader, to a false address circulated as a Gestapo trap,’ Marc said warily.

  Noah looked at Sister Madeline, who was rinsing out his socks in the brown water he’d used to wash his feet. ‘What do you think, sister?’

  ‘We are brides of Christ, not worldly creatures,’ Madeline said apologetically. ‘We care for orphan boys and whoever else the lord sends our way. An airman passed through in similar circumstances to yours last winter. We fed and sheltered him for a short period, but we have no idea what happened after he left us.’

  Marc saw Sister Madeline’s words as an opportunity to assert control over the situation, without having to tell a scarcely believable story about being a trained espionage agent.

  ‘I know my way around Paris,’ Marc said. ‘You two have no documentation. You speak French well, but your accents are unusual and men of fighting age are always treated with the highest suspicion. I’d suggest that we find a place to hide you. You can sleep and rest. The nuns can find you civilian clothes and food. This girl is our only lead and if Sister Madeline allows me, I can travel into the 18th Arrondisment and check out this address.’

  ‘If it’s a trap, they’ll arrest you,’ Noah said. ‘And you’ll lead them straight back to us.’

  Marc nodded. ‘I’ll have to be careful. But I’ve spent the last two years living off my wits in Paris. I won’t just knock on the front door and ask this girl for help.’

  ‘It’s still risky,’ Joseph said.

  ‘Everything’s risky,’ Marc said. ‘I’m willing to try helping you. Frankly, I’m amazed you got this far dressed in uniform and with no documents.’

  ‘What if the girl’s no help?’ Joseph asked.

  Marc shrugged. ‘We’ll have to think of another way of getting documents and helping you move south towards Spain.’

  Sister Peter looked sympathetically at Marc, and spoke in a gentle voice. ‘He left here and survived for two years, when no other runaway lasted more than a few days. I sense the hand of God in you three coming together like this.’

  The two Canadians didn’t look keen on entrusting their fate to a fourteen-year-old, but they were exhausted and didn’t have many options.

  ‘Get down to Paris then, I guess,’ Noah said, smiling at Marc. ‘I’m not gonna be walking far these next few days anyway.’

  ‘I’ll sort you food and money,’ Sister Madeline told Marc. ‘I’ll send one of the younger boys to tell Felix that you’re unable to work tomorrow.’

  ‘I may have to stay overnight,’ Marc said. ‘If the girl works in the day, for instance. I may not be able to speak with her and get back here before curfew.’

  ‘I’ll bring blankets and pillows so that Noah and Joseph can sleep here in the oratory tonight,’ Sister Madeline said. ‘We’ll find somewhere more secure before daybreak. But right now, I think we should put our hands together in prayer and seek the lord’s guidance.’

  Joseph nodded, and gave Marc a slight smile. ‘Can’t see no harm in having God on our side.’

  Note

  9 The Dieppe raid – officially named Operation Jubilee – took place on 19 August 1942. It involved 6,000 Canadian and British troops. The aim was for a large force to capture the harbour at Dieppe, destroy German facilities, take key pieces of German technology and abduct senior officers for intelligence purposes, before withdrawing in an orderly manner.

  The raid resulted in the loss of 96 Allied aircraft and 34 ships. 3,623 of the 6,086 Allied soldiers who landed on French soil were either captured or killed. It is regarded as one of the most disastrous Allied operations of the entire Second World War, although lessons learned in the failure at Dieppe were crucial to the success of the much larger D-Day landings which took place two years later.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Marc couldn’t sleep. Swimming with Jae and cuddling up wet and naked afterwards was one of the most beautiful, mind-blowing things that had ever happened to him.

  He’d spent most of his life stuck in this orphanage longing for adventure. Now he wanted nothing more than to stay where he was, working on Morel’s farm and spending time with Jae, but adventure had been thrust upon him.

  Marc didn’t feel like getting up early and going to Paris. His escape had been a dangerous game, which he’d won as much by luck as skill: landing the job in the Labour Administration office, Fischer being a terrible shot, the friendly gendarme, the girl who could have screamed when he stole the German’s wallet.

  Gambling with your life doesn’t matter when you’ve got nothing to live for, but now he had the memory of Jae’s breasts pressed against him, the baby-fine hairs on the back of her neck and her delicate fingers. He’d had crushes on girls before, but he was certain this was love.

  Yet Marc felt for the two Canadians. In Germany, he’d tended to think day-to-day: how to avoid a nasty guard, how to keep bugs off his mattress, what would the next meal be? But when he thought about the prisoners now, he kept wondering how it would end for people like ex-cabin mates Vincent and Richard. If the Allies invaded Europe and put the squeeze on Germany, the prisoners would get worked harder and fed less until they died. If the Germans won, they’d live out their lives as slaves.

  So when Marc jumped off his bunk at 5 a.m., he resented having to re-enter the world of dodgy documents, chases and checkpoints, but he genuinely wanted to re-establish his links with the resistance and help the two Canadians.

  ‘Why are you getting dressed?’ Jacques asked, from the bunk below.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ Marc whispered.

  Down in the kitchen, Sister Madeline had laid out bread and cheese for Marc’s breakfast, a canvas bag with a sandwich and some apples for lunch, plus ration coupons and money in case he needed to stay overnight.

  Marc added a change of clothes, a small metal file and purposely-bent piece of wire that would serve as a basic lock-picking kit, plus the cook’s knife he’d used to kill the squirrel the night before.

  The sun was starting to come up when Marc finished a brisk six-kilometre walk from the orphanage to Beauvais Station. The seventy-minute train ride was quiet, but hordes of Parisians crowded the platform when his train reached the city centre, waiting to board the train going the other way.

  Spending a weekend in the country north of the city had always been popular with Parisians, but tight rationing added the illicit attraction of buying black-market food from farmers.

  Chalice Poyer’s address should have been a short Metro ride, but the line was closed so Marc had to take two buses. He stepped off in a hilly neighbourhood of five-and six-storey apartment blocks: the kind of place where an office secretary or minor civil servant might live.

  The buildings had names rather than numbers, and Marc had to get directions at a cafe. Chalice Poyer lived in apartment 3–4, on the fourth floor of a narrow block. Like most Paris apartment blocks, there was a desk for a concierge, but judging by the dust and the absence of a chair nobody had worked this desk in years.

  Marc checked the row of metal boxes in the lobby. The name Poyer was still on the mailbox for apartment 3–4. Although the box was locked, there was enough of a gap for him to see a couple of letters inside, but not enough to make him think she’d moved away.

  If Chalice had lived in a house, Marc could have skirted around, peeked through the windows or looked over the back wall. Checking
out a fourth-floor apartment was trickier.

  He passed a woman on the stairs who took no notice of him. Marc had thought up a cover story while he was on the train. If anyone asked his business he’d say that he’d lived nearby when he was younger and was searching for an old school friend who he’d not seen since the invasion.

  The fourth floor had five apartments. Number three was at the end of a short corridor, with a set of metal fire stairs crossing the window at the far end. Little kids played rowdily in the apartment opposite, and a whiff of drains and urine came from the communal toilets and rusted bath tub shared by all five flats.

  Charles Henderson had taught Marc that the critical task when making an approach is to be patient, and find out everything possible about your target before letting them know you exist.

  Marc’s first task was finding out whether Chalice was at home. He knocked loudly on the door, then backed quickly into the communal bathroom across the hallway. The door didn’t open, so she was either out or a heavy sleeper.

  Marc decided that the fire escape would be his next step. Opening the window made more noise than he would have liked, but the metal balcony brought him within reach of a narrow apartment window, which had mercifully been left open in the hot weather.

  To be certain nobody was inside, Marc gave the window a noisy upwards shove, then backed up to the wall. When no head popped out to investigate, Marc stepped over the balcony on to a precariously fragile window ledge and crawled through, dropping down on to polished wooden boards.

  The apartment was a single room, with a built-in wardrobe and wash basin along one wall. The only other items were a metal-framed double bed and a chest of drawers. Everything was neat, which was how resistance operatives were taught to be, because it’s easier to detect if a neat apartment has been searched than a messy one.

  Marc was wary of touching anything, but he noted a distinct lack of personal mementos, such as photographs or address books. This was another sign of a trained spy, because if you didn’t crack under torture, the Gestapo would try and break you by threatening friends and family.