‘Well – no, she—’
A black Citroën – petrol-powered, therefore either German or Milice – swung out of Rue Racine close ahead of them, its engine slowing – more than it had already for the corner – and the driver braking, but then changing his mind: shifting gear, accelerating down towards the quai. She asked Estelle, ‘You were saying – Jacqui didn’t… what, think you were up to it?’
‘She thought I was too young – that when I’m a little older I might become her manageress, and she’d like that, but—’
‘Let’s hope what’s-his-name decides to go back to Paris, then.’
‘I’m not sure I could do it. For instance, the control of staff, since one would need at least one other—’
‘Might Jacqui come back? Does she still have her apartment over the shop?’
‘Yes. When she’s here she lives there, but – I don’t know. The way the war’s going – she doesn’t agree with me, but surely the Allies might be here quite soon – and there’ll be a great battle for Paris, won’t there? Even for Rouen?’
‘Perhaps. Although it looks as if the Boches are getting out. The roads today – heavens, you should have seen it! There’d been air attacks as well – in fact I was very lucky… Look, what about a coffee – or some supper? Come to think of it, I’m famished – and it would be nice to have your company, Estelle.’
‘Well—’
She was checking the time. Rosie went on, ‘Trying to remember – a café I used to eat in – on Rue Guillaume-le-Conquérant?’
‘You mean the Brasserie Guillaume. Yes, that’s not far – if we aren’t too long—’
‘It’ll be my treat, of course…’
* * *
Vegetable soup, bread, cheese, so-called coffee. She persuaded the old waiter to allow them second helpings of the soup and more bread to go with it; as far as she was concerned it had been a fairly spartan day. The weekend too – they fed one well at Fawley Court but it had been a hard grind – until late on Monday, then all of Tuesday and literally from dawn to dusk yesterday, followed by take-off from Tempsford after moonrise. While here and now the question was whether by playing the sympathetic friend of Jacqueline Clermont she was going to worm an address or telephone number out of Estelle. Alternatively give up, push on to Paris empty-handed, with one more day down the drain.
Smiling at Estelle, at something she’d said. There couldn’t be more than a year or two between them, but she was really very unsophisticated – young for her age and fairly dim. It was conceivable that if Jacqui had said her address in Paris was not to be divulged, Estelle would die at the stake sooner than divulge it.
‘This is so kind of you.’
‘Oh, shush!’
A giggle. ‘Truly. And coming as such a surprise makes it even nicer. I’m looking forward to telling Mademoiselle Jacqui—’
‘Better still, let me tell her.’ A hand on Estelle’s, on the iron table. ‘Seriously – I mean privately, just between the two of us – you do have an address for her, don’t you?’
‘No – no, she—’
‘It’s very much in her interest, Estelle, that I should get in touch with her. For reasons which it’s difficult – well, embarrassing – to go into—’
‘But I couldn’t – honestly…’
Eyes wide with alarm: and one knew now that she did have an address. Not, ‘I haven’t one, I swear it’ but ‘I couldn’t give it to you, honestly.’ And the fact that she was so upset about it. Rosie sighed. ‘I’ll risk the embarrassment – you’ve simply got to understand why it’s vital. I should talk to her in Paris right away.’ She was virtually whispering. ‘Jacqui has a… well, a very close friend, let’s call him – who’s a German. I could tell you his name but I think you must know it. Huh? Must have known about him – Estelle?’
A nod: eyes down. ‘It’s why she doesn’t want – well—’
‘To be tracked down. Yes, I realise. On the other hand those women in your salon know all about it anyway – so what’s the difference? I swear to you – if Jacqueline could have known I was coming, she’d certainly have wanted you to give me her address!’
‘Yes. I suppose. But—’
‘You said there’ll be a battle for Paris, and you may be right, but there’ll certainly be a rising in Paris, by the Resistance. I don’t want to frighten you, but they won’t only be killing Germans, they’ll be hunting down collabos, won’t they.’
‘But she is not a—’
‘In their eyes she is, and that’s what matters. Those customers of yours knew all about Amiens a year ago, didn’t they? Now another Boche lover – and SD, at that!’
No answer. Rosie followed up quickly: ‘I can help her, you see. You might find it difficult to swallow, but I swear to you it’s the honest truth. She may not realise how close the danger is – and he’s not going to tell her – nor when the time comes will he be there to protect her. Even if that concerned him. He’ll be all right – on his way with all the rest of them – but she’ll be left, won’t she… and with the mob out in the streets. I’ve come a long way to try to help her because I have to, I owe it to her!’
‘You’d go to Paris now?’
‘Of course!’
‘But she made me promise—’
‘First, this is to save her life. At least, save her from serious harm. Be clear about that. Second, I won’t tell her I got the address from you. D’you have a telephone number, by the way?’
‘No. She calls us. How else might you have got the address?’
The girl wasn’t all that stupid. Rosie whispered, ‘From another source which I can’t discuss with you. Nothing to do with Rouen – I won’t have been here, you won’t come into it at all. If I haven’t been here, how could you? But I can’t discuss it, except to say she’ll know what I’m talking about. The source of my information, I mean. Look – I’ll tell you. Strictly between you and me, in the past year Jacqui has rendered certain services to the Resistance. I’ve been involved in it too. So happens, only a few people know about it, and none of them are in Paris, so I’m her witness – d’you understand? She may have to go into hiding for a while, but – please, Estelle…’
Chapter 4
Ben came up quickly from his chart-room into the gunboat’s bridge. All four engines had stopped; he’d heard the skipper’s order and the clink of the telegraphs only seconds before the abrupt cessation of that thunderous roar, and by the time he was in the bridge MGB 600 was already rolling more noticeably as she lost way, silence as well as fog closing in around her. The fog was no thicker than it had been when he’d gone below ten minutes earlier, but there wasn’t a damn thing in sight.
Which of course was the answer. Nothing in sight even astern, where there should have been. OK, so it was still dark in any case – darkish – but they’d had the Norwegian launch Ekhorn following at a distance of about a cable’s length – 200 yards – with her bow-wave plain to see – through binoculars, at least – and now damn-all, only the heaving surface of the Norwegian Sea with the fog lying on it like oily wool. If the Ekhorn had been anything like in station – two or three cables astern, say, if she’d only dropped back a bit – she’d have been up with them by now, surely. Visibility was about a cable and a half, two cables at most, and the reason for stopping would have been (a) to let the Norwegian catch up, (b) to listen, get a bearing on the sound of his engines.
Mike Hughes had glanced at Ben and shaken his head. Glasses at his eyes again then, continuing the search. He’d been CO of this motor gunboat in the Dartmouth flotilla when Ben had been her navigating officer – a bloody age ago – running agents and cargoes of weaponry on moonless nights to French Resistance groups in Brittany. Had landed Rosie once – and brought her off again. Never guessing how temporary a blessing that would prove to be – Rosie having been shot dead beside some railway line in Alsace a couple of months ago.
All right, so this was no time for wallowing in private misery. It just happened to be the
re all the time – in or at the back of any other thinking. They’d only broken the news to him three weeks ago, at a meeting in the SOE building in Baker Street: there’d been a girl called Lise present who’d been with Rosie only seconds before they’d shot her down. Rosie had made a target of herself so that Lise could get away.
With no way on now, 600 was rolling hard. Mike Hughes pushing back his battered, salt-stained cap. ‘Could’ve sworn I heard her – just as we stopped engines…’
‘Thought I did too, sir.’ Nick Ball, that was. In the Dartmouth flotilla days he’d been a sub-lieutenant and MGB 600’s boat officer, meaning that one of his jobs had been the rowing ashore in a dinghy of agents and cargoes, and bringing off agents who were returning. He was a lieutenant now and Hughes’ second-in-command; there was a lad by name of Cummings in his old job. He’d added, ‘Could’ve been aircraft passing, I suppose.’
Hughes said, checking the time, ‘Give it two minutes, then we’ll check back a mile or two in case he broke down.’ He referring to the Ekhorn’s skipper – Nils Iversen. Glancing at Ben then: ‘We know where we are, I take it?’
‘Near enough.’ The joky question hardly merited a ‘sir’ in response. Ben did put one in occasionally – after all Hughes was the gunboat’s captain, despite he and Ben being of the same rank now, both lieutenant-commanders. Mike was older anyway, had been a solicitor in practice before the war when Ben had been struggling to become a painter, keeping the wolf from the door in Paris by taking on any work he could get, such as washing dishes in those very grand hotels – which one had heard were now all occupied by the creatures who’d killed Rosie. He added to Hughes, ‘In forty minutes, fog permitting, I’d have expected to pick up the Ytteroerne light-structure. However Ytteroerne’s pronounced.’ Looking round at Jens Vidlin, the Norwegian who’d be their inshore pilot and contact-man with shore-based agents. Short, stocky, bearded, in a woollen hat, sweater, baggy trousers stuffed into seaboots: didn’t talk much, probably because his English was so limited, didn’t correct Ben’s pronunciation of Ytteroerne either. Ben checked the time and told Hughes, ‘Your two minutes are up.’
‘Right. All engines slow ahead. Bring her round to port, Cox’n. Course, Ben?’
‘Two-six-four, sir.’
Chief Petty Officer Ambrose spun his wheel anticlockwise. He was another old hand in this boat; had been coxswain – as a petty officer – in Ben’s day, was now a Chief PO with (Ben had noticed back in Lerwick) a Distinguished Service Medal.
Hughes said, ‘We’ll stay at these revs.’ Ambrose easing wheel and rudder as 600 swung. Possible outcome of this manoeuvre might be to find the Ekhorn and either take her in tow or stand by her while her crew completed repairs – very swiftly, one might hope. Daylight wasn’t far off, the fog might lift quite suddenly, and if the Ekhorn was still immobilised she’d be natural prey to German aircraft. All right, 600 could put up a reasonably good defence – but not for ever, not if the Luftwaffe decided really to get into it. The Ekhorn had only a couple of Lewis guns. You were 180 miles from base – Lerwick in the Shetlands – and with the nights in these latitudes still too short for comfort, the intention had been to make a quick dash over and be tucked away under camouflage inside the fjord well before the dawn.
Might not be achievable now.
They all had their glasses up, searching. Ben, Hughes, Ball, Cummings, Vidlin too, as well as lookouts at the bridge’s after end. The 291 radar wasn’t in operation – wasn’t much use anyway, certainly couldn’t be relied on, and this near to the coast might have been detectable. MGB 600 was making about ten knots on her four engines at these low revs, the sea curling away in a great V from her bow but its surface hardly broken, only a light-coloured sizzle of it close to the boat’s stern. Despite which she was still making enough racket to be audible at least a mile away. Which was what made one think the Ekhorn must be lying stopped. While a sideline to the risk of being caught by enemy aircraft was that 600 was carrying a deck-cargo of 100-octane petrol in drums, for the Ekhorn. It was a large part of the reason she (600) was here at all; the intention was for Ekhorn to lie up in a number of different locations along this coast over the next two or three weeks while Nils Iversen made a survey of German guard-posts and defence arrangements – from here to maybe as far north as Kristiansund – and she wouldn’t have had anything like the endurance – fuel capacity – without this additional reserve.
You’d be serving other purposes as well. Landing weapons and explosives for the Norwegian Resistance, and bringing back to Lerwick two escaped prisoners and some SOE or SIS agents who were in hiding, awaiting pick-up. The escapers were in particular danger, as the Gestapo were hunting them. MTB crewmen, one Norwegian and one British, a telegraphist – who if they hadn’t managed to escape from some nearby prison camp would already have been shot – as presumably their shipmates had been.
By order of the Führer. Men landing on the coasts of occupied countries, or captured in territorial waters, were to be shot out of hand as ‘pirates’, even when in uniform and engaged in legitimate military operations.
One certainly didn’t want to hang around.
‘Five minutes gone, sir.’
Ball had said that. Hughes told Vidlin, speaking slowly and clearly for the Norwegian to understand, ‘We go on into fjord.’ Pointing north-eastward. Even at this speed 600 was rolling quite hard. Vidlin shrugging, gazing out into the fog and shaking his head, worried for his friends. Hughes added, ‘Sorry. Nothing else for it.’ To Ambrose then, ‘Bring her back to oh-eight-four, Cox’n.’
‘Oh-eight-four, aye aye—’
‘Half ahead all engines.’
Ball jerked the telegraphs over, the engine-room responded and you felt the surge of power as the inner pair of engines joined in and the revs built up, driving her back up towards her cruising speed of 21 knots. Ben checking sea and sky, quality of light and fog. Telling himself they might just make it. Even poor old Ekhorn might. Depending on how badly lost or broken down she was, and how alert the Krauts might be. Then for 600, how efficiently Jens Vidlin piloted her in between the holms and skerries, and how good a lying-up place it turned out to be when you did get in there. MGB 600 was carrying a considerable bulk of camouflage netting lashed down on her forepart, and another lot aft (with Vidlin’s 16-foot, double-ended Norway fjord-type dinghy secured upside-down on top of it), but if patrols were active, and with the locations of lookout-posts unknown – after the four months of no darkness, therefore no visits by either Norwegian Navy or Shetland Bus craft – hence the need for an updating survey by Iversen and his crew; you’d need all the camouflage you could get.
He told himself, on his way back down to his little chart-room, that the Ekhorn – Norwegian for ‘squirrel’ – might be perfectly all right. Might for instance have gone off course and passed them while they’d been motoring slowly back westward: ahead of them now, wondering where the hell they’d got to…
Chart-work now. Starting from where they’d been at the point of stopping, and estimating the time and distance lost, the small northerly drift of current and the fact that both turns had been made to seaward. Finding the entrance to one particular fjord on this rock-bound stretch of coast, rock-littered and islet-studded, you needed a fairly high standard of navigational accuracy. Before long, he thought, pencilling a new dead-reckoning position on the chart and extending their course from it, soon enough one might – depending on the fog, which admittedly was rather like wanting to have one’s cake and eat it – should spot that Ytteroerne lighthouse or light structure – not light, none of those lights were lit – and having spotted it, touch wood, not long after that be able to put Vidlin’s nose to the ground, so to speak, at a point where he’d feel himself at home.
* * *
After getting his knee smashed, Ben’s desk job had been in the offices in St James’s Street of a naval department called NID(C), which amongst other things controlled the Dartmouth-based gunboat flotilla’s clandestine operations
in landing agents and munitions on the Brittany coast. The departmental head was known as DDOD(I), which stood for Deputy Director Operations Division brackets Irregular, and his brief was to cater for the sea-transport requirements of both SIS and SOE.
Ben’s immediate boss, a commander by name of Charlie Cranmer, had drifted into his office a few days ago and asked casually, ‘Care to put in a spot of sea time, Ben?’
Everyone in the department knew he’d been putting in application after application to get back to sea, and in the same endeavour given up using a stick and made efforts not to limp. Cranmer also knew of Rosie’s death and its effect on him.
Ben had glanced at the calendar. ‘Not April Fool’s day…’
‘Remember Hughes, your CO in MGB 600?’
‘Of course.’
‘He’s at Lerwick – with 600 – on temporary detachment to help out in an emergency that’s arisen. You know of the so-called Shetland Bus operations?’
‘Heard of them – that’s about all. But they use fishing-boats, don’t they?’
Running agents and cargoes into Norway and bringing out refugees. They were fishermen, not Norwegian Navy men, highly independent characters, splendid seamen who knew the fjords intimately.
‘They’re reorganising. Have been since the season finished in the spring. Season of the midnight sun closes them down for the summer, you know. As it happens, the fishing-boat operation’s more or less had its day – they lost five boats and crews last winter and early spring, Jerries are making it almost impossible by banning the larger legit fishing craft – so theirs stand out like sore thumbs – and so on. They’re switching, believe it or not, to US Navy sub-chasers – small enough for the fjords, fast enough for the long hauls, well able to defend themselves – in fact ideal. Three have arrived so far – from Miami, brought over as deck cargo and put together on the Clyde, American base at Roseneath. That’s where the Shetland Bus lot are now – retraining, pretty fundamentally of course. Norwegian Navy personnel seem to have got themselves in on the act too. So on this particular job, MGB 600’s filling the breach. With not much doing on the Brittany coast now – as you know – also since she’s just completed a major refit—’
Single to Paris Page 4
