The Girl in the Baker's Van

by Richard Savin

  The night had cleared and there was promise of a frost in the air as he made his way along Victoria Street in the direction of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament; down at the far end of the street Big Ben was tolling the hour. At the junction with Artillery Row he stepped off the pavement and pushed his way through the etched and cut-glass door of The Albert public house. Inside, the air was warm and thick with the reverberation of a score or more voices all trying to make themselves heard over the general hubbub. He elbowed and pushed his way to the bar, got a pint of bitter then looked for a quieter corner. There was only one table but that would do. As he got to it, he almost collided with a young woman. ‘I saw it first,’ was all she said and, parking herself on the only chair, proceeded to ignore him.

  He was caught off-guard for a moment, then spotting a spare chair he dumped his pint on the table next to her drink, stepped over to it then, coming back, dropped it alongside the table and sat down.

  ‘This is my table,’ she protested indignantly.

  Grainger smiled and shook his head. ‘No, actually it belongs to the pub. You’re just borrowing it, and so am I.’ She didn’t look amused and, gathering up her drink, stood and looked around her for another refuge but everything else was taken. She sat down again.

  ‘Good decision,’ he said, trying to make light of the situation, but she wasn’t in a mood to see the funny side of it. As he sat waiting for a response – which didn’t come – it registered that he had seen her before. Then he placed her, she was the receptionist, the girl in the front office at SOE. ‘Not washing your hair tonight then,’ he quipped. She shot him a hostile look; he laughed a little apologetic laugh – it was not going well. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  She looked hard at him, wrinkling her nose as if he didn’t smell quite right. ‘Should I?’

  ‘I came into the office a couple of days ago. Offered to take you to see a movie; you turned me down – said you were washing your hair that night.’

  Her face softened to just the hint of a smile. ‘Oh yes, now I remember. You’re one of Sir Charles Armitage’s boys – MI5?’ Grainger nodded. He thought he might be in with a chance but she quickly crushed it.

  ‘I don’t date the hired help – company policy.’ She put on a smug look that said keep off the grass, you’re not eligible.

  ‘You could make an exception,’ he said hopefully. ‘Besides, I’m not really part of your mob – more a sort of friend of the family helping out.’

  ‘Wouldn’t make any difference,’ she said, brushing aside his attempt and his hopes along with it. ‘You’re not my type.’

  ‘So, what is your type?’

  She finally broke and gave him a smile. ‘You get marks for persistence,’ she said. ‘Here’s to your war …,’ she picked up her glass to toast him, ‘… whatever it is.’ She looked at him for a few seconds, her glass still held up ready to toast and drink. ‘I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Grainger, Dicky Grainger.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember now. Grainger.’ She clinked the foot of her glass against his. ‘To Grainger’s War,’ she said, and downed it in one gulp.

  He grabbed her empty glass like an opportunity. ‘Let me get you another one – what’s in it?’

  ‘Nothing for you – you’d be wasting your time,’ she said grinning, ‘but if you’re buying it’s gin and vermouth – dry.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he shot back at her, ‘I’ve got nothing better to do and time to kill – so why not with you?’

  He came back with the drink but she had gone. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘that’s shot my fox,’ and settled down to his pint. Looking around at the people crowding the room he fell to wondering what was going on in all their lives; every one of them with their own dreams, their own problems, their own hopes. He was contemplating this and Dennis and Jo when her face came into view again and she sat down.

  ‘Had to powder my nose,’ she said with a little smile. ‘Is this mine?’ She picked up the drink and sipped at it.

  Flushed with a new confidence he picked up his glass and raised it. ‘Here’s to you,’ he paused and looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Gillian.’

  ‘Gillian,’ he repeated. ‘There, now we’re even. So tell me why I’m not your type.’

  ‘Well, Dicky,’ she paused, and then gave him a slightly sour look. ‘Dicky – I don’t like that for a start. You should call yourself Richard; Dicky is like some mummy’s boy.’

  ‘And …’

  She tilted her head slightly to one side and thought. ‘You’re nice enough – but there’s something about your kind that’s not stable. I want a man who’s steady, goes to the office, has a good reputation at the bank, someone who’ll keep me and my children in comfort, nothing too exciting, normal. That’s what most people want – stability. You’d be a roller coaster ride. I’ve seen your type before – you’re a nightmare.’

  There was no answer to that so instead he said, ‘What about supper? I ship out tomorrow. I could do with the company.’

  She let out a little laugh; he thought his luck might be changing. ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘probably not a good idea. I might end up liking you and that would be awkward.’

  She stood up. ‘No, don’t,’ she said as she saw he was about to get up too. ‘Have a good war, Richard Grainger. Maybe we’ll meet again one day – after it’s all over.’

  He sat for a while after she had left, then finished his pint and took a taxi to Leicester Square where he found a table in a favourite haunt, Stones Chop House. He was a regular and the waiting staff knew him.

  ‘Tell me, Dodson,’ he asked the elderly maître d’ who stood at the table waiting to take his order, ‘would you describe me as risky and unreliable?’

  Dodson looked surprised. ‘Good Lord, no Mr Grainger, sir. You’re a civil servant in the Home Office; you could never be described as that.’

  ‘What if I said I was a secret agent working for the government on some dangerous mission?’

  Dodson was silent for a moment as his brain processed the proposition. ‘Well then, sir,’ he finally replied soberly, ‘that would be different, and most unsatisfactory – but thank goodness you are not.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Grainger assured him. ‘I’ll have the steak and kidney pud as usual.’

  *

  The train to Ringwood was almost empty; most of the passengers had left it at Southampton. Outside the station a car was waiting to take him to Beaulieu. As he got in the driver passed him a hand to shake. ‘One of Charlie’s boys they tell me. Good to have you on board. You’ll find this a bit more exciting than MI5 – we’re all action here you know – ever jumped before?’

  Grainger shook his head but said nothing.

  The jumping wasn’t as bad as he had thought it might be. Training started with the tower – a large wooden structure shaped like an oil derrick with a platform on top. There was a gantry arm. They put him in a harness attached to a rope with a pulley, and told him to jump. ‘It was bloody terrifying,’ he told Armitage after he’d got back from Beaulieu. ‘I stepped out into nothing but air, which goes against every instinct in the body and your mind screams at you not to do it – but then after a couple of times it was actually quite fun.’

  The first real jump from a Lysander was made on a bright day with clear air and not a cloud in sight. That convinced him, he would take it up as a hobby after the war was over. Just floating down watching the world from a couple of thousand feet had brought a new dimension in sensation. He felt a strange tingling of excitement in his groin; this could be better than sex, although he couldn’t be certain – it was so long since he’d had a woman he couldn’t exactly remember what it was like.

  The instruction in unarmed combat was less fun than the jumping and much harder to master. He learned what he could and hoped if he had to use it, it would work. The week was over and he caught the train back to London. As it rumbled across the points at Clap
ham Junction he found himself thinking about Jo and Dennis, if they would ever get to tie the knot. He thought about phoning him when he got back to the flat in Upper Tachbrook Street but decided against it. He had an op coming up and that was enough to think about.

  The following morning he packed a small grip and went to Baker Street for his briefing. Gillian was sitting at her desk but apart from a nod nothing passed between them. She was right, he told himself, he would not make a good catch.

  He sat across the desk from G and waited. The briefing was short, less than half an hour.

  ‘We’ve had a request from the Americans. Don’t suppose you know but we’ve been helping them set up their own SOE type operation.’

  Grainger shook his head and agreed he hadn’t heard of it.

  ‘OSS they’re calling it. They’ve already got a foothold in Spain – just across the border from Vichy.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘One of their contacts is a member of the Polish underground, code name Kasha. He’s got something the Americans are anxious to have. Unfortunately he’s managed to get himself arrested; they’ve stuck him in Fresnes jail, just south of Paris. The Americans would like us to spring him and get him down to them in Spain. That’s where you come in. Charlie Armitage tells me you’re good at this kind of thing.’

  Grainger grinned slightly but said nothing.

  ‘The Americans are worried the Gestapo will get what he’s carrying.’

  ‘What is he carrying?’

  ‘No idea – they’re not saying.’ G folded his arms and rocked back on his chair. ‘I’ve arranged a rendezvous with a new resistance cell in Abbeville. They’ll get you down to Paris, there’s a contact there who will give you the lay of the land and whatever material assistance you need. After that it’s down to you. I can’t stress how important this is – it’s an opportunity to show the Americans how it’s done. Any ideas on how you’ll do it.’

  Grainger shook his head, ‘I need to be there on the ground first, there’ll be a way – there always is.’

  G Stood up, indicating the briefing was at an end. ‘Good luck old chap.’ He extended a hand and they both shook.

  Afterwards he took the underground to Greenford. There he was met by an RAF driver in a rattley Austin 10 and was driven the short distance to the airstrip at Northolt.

  ‘Take off is midnight,’ the ops Wing Commander informed him. ‘Visibility is forecast to be good. It’ll be very clear and there’s a moon so you won’t be jumping; too much risk of you being seen by Jerry. Instead we’re putting you down in a field a bit west of Abbeville in the Somme estuary; it’s marshy so the Germans don’t patrol it very much. We’re sticking you in little Auster, bit of a string bag I’m afraid but it won’t get stuck in the boggy ground. There’ll be some of our French people waiting for you – from a small resistance cell. Good luck.’

  CHAPTER 5

  Natzweiler Struthoff detention camp

  Schreiber looked at the frightened man who sat in front of him, hardly more than a boy really. One eye was closed up with an ugly yellow and purple bruise surrounding it. The room was cold and the young man shivered uncontrollably. The Sicherheitsdienst had already interrogated him, and it showed. Their methods were rough and crude, so often yielding nothing more than false confessions and doubtful information. A man would say anything if the pain was enough – and then too much; but what good was it if the information extracted was rubbish, just babblings to make the pain stop? He preferred his own methods; he was a policeman – and a detective.

  Alain Pfeiffer looked at the person in front of him, squinting through his one good eye at a man who could at any moment order his execution. He was no longer in control of his body. It had been so artfully abused that it was now nothing more than an instrument of pain that could be played on at a whim by his tormentors, pain so refined that merely a touch would reduce him to the depths of drivelling despair. He would talk; he would have to. Now he would tell them anything – not in the hope of freedom but in the hope that they would end his agony with a bullet in the head.

  ‘What do you know about this man you were to meet – Kasha, I think he is called? Had you met him before?’

  Alain shook his head.

  ‘Did your sister know him?’

  ‘No.’ The words came out in a hoarse whisper forced through the convulsions in his throat where he had been garrotted, not just once, but again and again until he lost consciousness.

  ‘Why did she go to the farmhouse with you?’ He said nothing.

  Schreiber leaned closer to him. ‘You must answer,’ he said calmly, ‘or I will have to send you back to the others – and you know how that will be. Do you understand?’

  Alain nodded. What could he tell them? He had run an errand for France. Evangeline had gone with him for company. They had almost treated it like a game; they had gone along naïvely thinking they could somehow help in a cause they did not understand, and it had gone grotesquely wrong. He was being asked questions he could not answer and they would not believe him.

  ‘Where is your sister now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Schreiber thought on it for a moment. He had an idea forming. ‘I believe you.’

  Alain was surprised; until then such an answer had always resulted in someone hitting him and demanding another, more acceptable answer. Here was someone who understood he might in reality know nothing.

  ‘This man, Kasha…’ he looked directly into Alain’s open eye, ‘…he is very dangerous. Your sister is in great peril from him. You know that, don’t you?’

  Alain shook his head. ‘I never met him.’ His lips were swollen and ripped; the words came slowly.

  ‘But you had the package for him. What was in it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was just a package, wrapped in oilcloth. I never opened it – it wasn’t for me.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. Who gave you the package? How was it delivered?’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  Again he shook his head. ‘She was called Cigale. She telephoned Joseph the baker in Turckheim. She came with the package but I never saw her.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Schreiber said, ‘Joseph the baker,’ but he didn’t elaborate.

  Schreiber stopped and considered what he had. This man knew nothing, it was clear. He needed to find Kasha and for that he needed to find the sister – Evangeline. He looked at the wreck in front of him, sizing him up – he was ripe for a little collaboration. By this stage they always were; it would be easy. ‘I am prepared to help you,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘but you will need to help me. Will you help me?’

  He stopped to let the idea sink in. ‘Help me find your sister and this man Kasha and I will set you and her free. You will not be bothered again and this nightmare will end.’

  In the confusion of the pain and the distraction of his beaten body the words took their time to register. It must be a trick, some sort of trap, but it held out a hope and he was desperate, so he grasped it and held on to the slim threads that the offer could be trusted. He said nothing, but nodded his consent.

  ‘There is one more thing,’ Schreiber said casually, as he watched for any reaction in Alain. ‘Do you know the name Kandler – Helmut Kandler? Does that mean anything to you?’

  There was no detectable response; Schreiber was certain he did not know anything of the events that had taken place in the Potsdamer Platz station. It was just a throwaway question, but those were the questions that often produced unexpected nuggets and if you didn’t ask them you would not get the occasional gem. He dismissed it.

  Before Schreiber had left Berlin he had taken two junior policemen with him and paid a visit to Kandler’s home. He was convinced it was not suicide. When they arrived at the house they discovered that Kandler had lived with his aged mother, a woman in her 80s, who was nearly blind with cataracts. When she learned of his death she had wept bitterly for the loss of her only son. It further reinf
orced his view that Kandler had been murdered and the note planted – a clumsy attempt to make it look as if he had taken his own life. It was not an accident; he was sure of that too. Kandler was not married and the only person in his life seemed to be his mother for whom he cared. Everything pointed to him being a devoted son; it was improbable he would abandon her in such a fashion.

  ‘We have to make a search of your son’s room, Frau Kandler,’ he told the woman, apologising for the intrusion. She acquiesced without protest, sitting on a chair weeping to herself while they went about their business. He fleetingly wondered how she might cope without her son but he put the thought aside; there were many worse off than her. She would have to find a way to manage; it was not his problem.

  ‘What is this?’ Schreiber held up a small notebook that one of his men had found in a desk drawer. The question was no more than rhetorical; he doubted she could even see what he held in his hand let alone know what it was. The notebook contained lists of numbers – nothing else – just numbers; some of the numbers had a line run through them. It did not immediately strike any chord or indicate any significance so he slipped it into his pocket to look at later.

  Kandler had taken the key from the files – that much he did know, but why? Was he paid to do it? There was no evidence of cash. Maybe he was a political malcontent and wanted to damage the Nazis by helping the British – there were plenty of those hiding in the closets, waiting for an opportunity. Someone had used that key to get into the apartment in Kreuzberg, had broken open a concealed box and taken something from it. The concierge had seen the visitor and from her description Kraus identified him as his Polish spy, Kasha. It was most likely that what he took from the apartment was the oilcloth package Alain Pfeiffer had tried to deliver to the farmhouse when he had arrested him. Now Kraus and the sister had disappeared; he was certain Kasha must have killed Kraus, then gone on the run with the girl. Why would she do that? Either she was a résistante or Kasha had her hostage – but that led him nowhere and it still didn’t answer the question – what was the connection between Kasha and Kandler, and what was in the package?