by Peter May
‘I don’t need to go inside,’ she said. ‘Just to give you this.’ And she pulled out the folded sheet of paper from beneath her blouse to hold towards him.
He shook his head. ‘No, no. There might be a reply. If you translate, there’ll be no misunderstandings.’
She glanced up at the square tower which soared into the blue sky above them. There were glazed windows set into the wall about six metres up, and unglazed openings cut into the stone at seemingly random intervals above that. She sighed and stepped inside, climbing narrow stone steps in the dark that led up to a floor lit by the window she had seen from the outside. Another, on the facing wall, looked out over the valley and the jumble of red-tiled roofs of Saint-Céré immediately below. She could see the Place de la République at its heart, and the four-storey lycée building on the far side of the River Bave. And away to the right, the turrets of Château de Montal shimmered in the afternoon heat.
A battered, old blue leather suitcase with rusted clasps sat open on a rough wooden table pushed against the wall below the far window. It was tightly packed with black bakelite units of interconnected electrical equipment, sliders and dials, knobs and switches. A tangle of black and red wire spewed out from one side of it to trail away across the floor into darkness. A Morse code transmitter key pivoted on a wooden block screwed to the table. A young man sitting at the table swivelled in his chair as they came up the stairs. He wore a grubby blue and white striped shirt that billowed baggily beneath his braces. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and he wore a dusty cap pulled down over a shock of pure black hair. He smiled when he saw Georgette, revealing a missing tooth at one side of a crooked and discoloured row of them. He stood up immediately and pulled off his cap to grin shyly. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘I’m Michel. Welcome to Radio Quercy.’ He waved a hand at the suitcase. ‘Best-equipped radio station in all of the Lot.’
Georgette looked at it in amazement. ‘Where do you get stuff like this?’
Michel said proudly, ‘It’s a Type A MkII suitcase radio made in Britain. Brought by an SOE agent parachuted on to the causses a few weeks ago.’
Even just the mention of SOE transported her back, however briefly, to that cold, wet, windy week on the Isle of Lewis.
‘Can we get on with it?’ The man who had let Georgette in at the gate glanced anxiously from the window.
The young radio operator held out a hand towards Georgette. ‘You’ve got the text?’
She handed him her piece of paper and he sat down with it to open a black leather notebook filled with lines of text and numbers, and embark on the process of encoding it. He scribbled the revised text that he would actually send on to the page of an open jotter. The pencil he held in oil-stained fingers was little more than a stub, its lead point blunted by use.
Georgette said, ‘What if they catch you with that notebook on you? Won’t they know your code?’
Without looking up, Michel said, ‘We use a poem I’ve selected. And that’s the key. The poem’s in my head.’ He tapped the notebook. ‘These are just transpositions. Wouldn’t mean anything to the Krauts.’
When he finished his encoding, Michel flicked switches and turned knobs and Georgette saw the needle on the circular dial dance into life. And he began his transmission, two fingers placed delicately on the transmitter key to tap out sequences of long and short beeps.
His companion was becoming agitated. He whispered to Georgette, ‘They know it the minute we start transmitting. And they know we’re somewhere in the area. They’ve been looking for us for days. It’s only a matter of time before they find us. This’ll be our last transmission from here.’
If he heard, Michel did not react. His focus was concentrated entirely on the key beneath his fingers, until finally he sat back, and Georgette saw sweat trickling down his neck from beneath his hair. ‘Done,’ he said.
‘How long do we have to wait?’
Michel looked at the other man. ‘As long as it takes.’
‘We don’t have as long as it takes, Michel. We need to be out of here.’
Michel raised a steadying hand. ‘Just give it a few, Jacques.’
The distant rumble of diesel motors carried to them on warm afternoon air and Jacques pressed his face to the window. ‘Jesus!’ Georgette heard him whisper under his breath. ‘They’re here.’
‘Who’s here?’ She was alarmed.
‘The Das Reich tank regiment.’ His breath condensed like bullet shots on the glass. ‘You can see them coming down the hill from Figeac on the far side of the town.’
Georgette crossed to the window and wiped away the grime to peer through it. And there in the distance, beyond the lycée, she saw a long column of tanks snaking slowly down through the trees on the road from Figeac. Trucks and motorbikes were already assembling beneath the plane trees in the Place de la République. She was startled by the far-off crackle of gunfire and recoiled from the window as if from an electric shock.
Jacques turned to Michel. ‘We need to go now!’
Michel nodded and stood up, shutting down the transmitter, and quickly unscrewing the transmission key from the table. He crossed the room, coiling lengths of wire to stuff hastily into the suitcase and snapped it shut. He stuffed his notebook in his pocket and tore the page with the encoded text from his jotter. Together with Georgette’s original text he crumpled it up and dropped it on to the floor, stooping down with a cigarette lighter in his hand to set them on fire. He stood up and watched as the paper burned, and when the writing on it was no longer legible, he stamped out the flames and grabbed his suitcase. ‘Let’s go.’
They hurried down the dark staircase to emerge blinking into the sunlight, momentarily blinded by it, before running for the gate. Down the narrow passage to the door that opened out through the fortifications on to the hillside beyond.
Georgette grabbed her bike and the three of them stood listening for a moment on the far side of the wall. The roar of the tanks was louder now, rumbling in the afternoon heat like summer thunder.
Michel nodded to Georgette. ‘Merci, mademoiselle.’ And he turned and ran off through the trees, hefting his transmitter.
Jacques said, ‘You’re on your own now.’ And he jumped over the wall to crash off through the undergrowth into the cover of the woods below.
Georgette mounted her bike, frightened and feeling very exposed. Her only way back to Montal was by road. She started off down the steep incline, gathering speed. At the mairie she rounded the bend and set off down the narrow road that wound its way around the hillside and down to the town below.
It was much faster on the way down than the way up. The air felt hot in her face, and she was having difficulty controlling her breathing. A long way off lay the safe haven of Château de Montal, and it seemed impossibly distant. Immediately below, the rooftops of Saint-Céré reflected afternoon sunlight off red Roman tiles.
She came fast around the final bend and on to the long straight stretch that descended to the hospital, and her heart very nearly stopped. The road at the foot of the hill was swarming with SS troopers, a truck and a couple of motorbikes. There was no way she could turn back, and nowhere for her to hide. She braked and drew to an unsteady stop as one of the soldiers stepped out into the road with his hand raised. He grabbed her bike and shouted at her to get off. Another caught her by the arm and marched her into the road. It was only then that she saw two men backed up against the wall at the foot of the hill. Civilians, beaten and bleeding, cowed and fearful. Georgette saw the fear in black eyes that met hers as half a dozen soldiers on a shouted command raised their rifles and shot them where they stood.
Georgette was shocked to her core. How easily the lives of those young men had simply been erased. All their memories, their hopes and expectations. The pain of growing up, falling in love, raising a family. The patriotism that had moved them to fight for the freedom of their cou
ntry. Extinguished in the blink of an eye. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she understood the true frailty of human existence. That our time on earth is just a split second of eternity. ‘Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ The words of the Shakespeare play they had studied at school came back to her, and she realised how easily she too could be gone in just a heartbeat. In just the next few moments. And what would any of it have meant?
The blood of the resistance fighters was already coagulating in the dust of the pavement, and she was pushed violently in the back before being made to walk among the soldiers along the road towards the centre of town.
She half turned, protesting. ‘My bike!’
The one who had wrenched it from her said, ‘You won’t be needing that again, mademoiselle.’ And the sense that her own death was imminent struck her with such force that her legs very nearly folded beneath her. Seldom in her life had she felt so utterly powerless.
As they turned into the Rue de la République, she saw yet more soldiers herding a large civilian crowd of mostly women and children into the Boulevard Gambetta. Perhaps forty of them or more. The two groups of soldiers met up and Georgette was shoved into the boulevard to join the other civilians. She saw dark frightened eyes flicker momentarily in her direction. A pall of fear that was almost palpable hung over the group, nervous soldiers prodding them with semi-automatic rifles, tension heightened by the shouted commands of their agitated Sturmbannführer. A man called Christian Tyschen.
An involuntary gasp escaped collectively from the townsfolk as shots rang out from the direction of the Pont Neuf which spanned the river at the Hôtel de la Truite. Tyschen screamed at his troops and rifles were immediately raised towards the crowd. Georgette heard children crying and several of the women called out, pleading with the Germans not to shoot.
Georgette felt sick to her stomach. So much for her brave notion that she could in any way protect the Mona Lisa. She couldn’t even keep herself safe. So this is how it was all going to end. In a hot dusty street in a provincial town in south-west France. In a hail of bullets from a trigger-happy bunch of SS troopers. The confidence of the occupiers had been shaken as they sensed that the war was starting to slip away from them. Their desire for revenge fed by fear.
Incongruously, a woman’s voice speaking German rose above the hubbub, and Georgette pushed herself up on tiptoes to see a small woman in a print dress belted at the waist addressing herself to the German commander. Short, crimped hair was parted at one side above a pretty face with an upturned nose. Tychsen was trying to ignore her, but she followed him as he strode among his troops, gesticulating with expressive hands, voice plaintive and pleading. The conversation was too fast for Georgette to follow, but the woman was persistent and fluent. Someone whispered, ‘That’s Berthe Nasinec. She’s Czech. Married to the hairdresser.’
‘What’s she saying?’ another asked.
‘No idea.’
Whatever it was, it was bothering the German commander. Initially, to Georgette, he had appeared young for a commanding officer, but watching for his reaction he seemed older now than his years. A thin face, badly scarred around the chin and mouth, blond hair greying beneath his peaked hat. As he removed it to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve, Georgette saw that he had very little of it left. She saw, too, that his sweat-stained uniform was punctuated by badges for bravery. And pinned to his shirt at the neck she recognised a Knight’s Cross with oak leaves. But it didn’t take much courage, she thought, to turn guns on a group of unarmed women and children.
For the first time Tyschen met Berthe’s eye and he shouted at her. Words that no one could understand. But she was unperturbed, and continued following in his wake, pleading, cajoling. Suddenly he turned, taking his pistol from his holster, and pointed it at her head. She stopped, but stood her ground and thrust her chin out in defiance, almost daring him to shoot. Whatever she said then either embarrassed or shamed him, for the Sturmbannführer turned away, re-
holstering his weapon, and started shouting fresh orders at his men. They in turn lowered their weapons and headed off at the double along the boulevard. Very quickly the crowd began to disperse, hurrying off through alleyways mired in shadow, along the street in the direction of the factory, or turning the other way towards the fire station, mothers raising children in their arms as they fled.
Georgette felt a hand on her shoulder. She’d barely had time to absorb that they had somehow been reprieved. Only history would reveal just what a narrow escape it had been. For the next day, Tyschen’s soldiers would go on to hang ninety-nine men from an avenue of trees in the nearby town of Tulle.
Her legs were still like jelly and she turned, startled, at the touch on her shoulder. A grim-faced Lange stood behind her. He was in uniform, but seemed much less sure of himself than the last time she had seen him.
‘Come with me, quickly,’ he said. ‘They’re shooting resistance people all over the place. We don’t want to get caught up in this.’
They cut through a narrow passageway to a street of terraced houses shaded by old plane trees in full leaf. At the end of it, they turned down a lane that led towards the rugby stadium and the cemetery, and she saw his green MG parked there in the shade.
‘Wolff’s here,’ he said breathlessly. ‘He’s chosen his moment well. When he has brute force on his side. He can take the painting and kill whoever he needs to in the process, and with all this confusion no one will be any the wiser.’
They climbed into the car and he started the motor, before turning anxiously towards her.
‘Did you make the switch?’
She nodded, still barely able to find her voice.
‘Where’s the original?’
‘Still at the house in Carennac. I’ve hidden it.’
He seemed relieved. ‘Good. We need to go now and get her to safety.’
At the junction with the road south to Gramat, they were forced to stop where soldiers had established a roadblock to allow free passage of an endless convoy of troop trucks and motorcycles and other vehicles heading north. They sat with the engine idling while half a dozen soldiers pointed their rifles into the car and a senior officer checked both sets of papers. He scrutinised them carefully, then examined Georgette with curious eyes which flickered then towards Lange. After the briefest of pauses he saluted, then shouted an order to halt the convoy and let the MG through. Lange accelerated away with relief. He said, ‘A piece of paper from the Führer’s office is useful, but might not always count for much in present circumstances. Nervous soldiers shoot first and ask questions later.’
The drive on the long winding road back to the house seemed endless. Glimpses through the trees of sunlight coruscating on the slow-moving waters of the Dordogne, nothing moving in the flood plain beyond. The turning of the world, it seemed, had been put on pause by the momentous events unfolding elsewhere. Georgette could not stop her hands from trembling.
When they got to Carennac the village was deserted. Shop, café, hotels all shuttered up. People locked away in their houses. No one wanted to attract attention to themselves, and only the spectres of the past walked the streets, silently inviting them to become phantoms of the future.
Lange drew in at the foot of Georgette’s steps, killed the motor and stepped out on to the asphalt. He stood for several long moments, listening intently, eyes scanning the park and the streets that led off into the silent heart of the village. But there was not a sound other than the slow tick-tick of the engine as it cooled, and some somnolent birdsong among the trees in the park.
He nodded towards the door. ‘Let’s go in.’
He followed her up the stone stairway and into the cool of the house, passing through the kitchen and into the grand salon. There she stopped, and he walked briskly past her, casting anxious eyes around the room before turning to face her.
‘Where is it?’
‘Don’t worry. It’s safely hidden. And anyway, Wolff won’t know where to find me if I’m not at the château.’
‘Of course he will!’ Lange snapped. ‘He’s been tracking you all this time. He’ll know everything about you.’ He paused. ‘Where’s the painting?’
She frowned. ‘I told you, it’s perfectly safe.’
Lange drew his pistol and pointed it at her. ‘Tell me!’
Georgette was startled and looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Paul?’
He shook his head. ‘Where is it?’
But for Georgette time had come to a dead stop. Her life, she knew with a greater clarity than she had felt even in the Boulevard Gambetta, was over. Only now, she wanted it to be over. Because how could she ever live with this betrayal. With her own blind stupidity. She felt the first warm tears track their way slowly down her cheeks. In a tiny voice she said, ‘That’s all you ever wanted from me, wasn’t it? The Mona Lisa?’
‘It’s what Hitler asked me to get for him, and it’s what I intend to deliver. Now where is it?’
‘What if I won’t tell you?’
‘Then I’ll kill you and tear the place apart until I find it.’
She stared at him for a long, long moment. In her heart, what she had taken for love morphed into hatred, and for a few fleeting moments she thought he felt it too, and saw discomfort or maybe even guilt in his eyes. ‘You’d better kill me, then,’ she said. ‘Because I’m not going to tell you.’
She closed her eyes. Not wanting to see him as he pulled the trigger to compound his treachery. More tears spilled from between eyelids squeezed tightly shut. She had seen the lives of men extinguished in a split second less than an hour before. And now she saw her own brief life flash before her eyes. Like a film that spooled too quickly, allowing for only a handful of memories to register. The childhood tragedy of a much-loved father taken too soon, the sadness of her mother’s passing. Lange as he made love to her, touching her face with tender fingers. Rose’s words to her that night at the apartment in Paris. If you ever sleep with him, it’ll be the end of you, you know that? She had been right. And now she remembered the day in the blackhouse overlooking the beach at Uig Bay, when Mairi’s grandmother had seen the halo of darkness around her.
