Single to Paris

by Single to Paris (retail) (epub)

  ‘This particular job being?’

  ‘Escorting a Norwegian-manned launch – Shetland Bus people, one gathers – to some fjord about a hundred miles north of Bergen, landing the usual sort of cargo – also cased patrol for the Norwegians’ use – and bringing off some escapers. It’s not the season yet for such shenanigans, but at a pinch they reckon it can be done.’ Ben had seen Cranmer touch the wooden arm of his chair. Adding then, ‘The bit about escapers is from SIS, who had it from their man in Oslo – hue and cry along that coast, urgent to get the blokes out double-quick, et cetera.’

  ‘Where do I come in?’

  ‘Hughes lacks a navigator. Over the scrambler from Lerwick he mentioned this, and asked, “Don’t suppose Ben Quarry’s around and at a loose end, is he?”’

  ‘Kind thought, too. But Lerwick’s a fair stretch, and if it’s so urgent—’

  ‘Sleeper tonight to Aberdeen, and fly from there. Little machine takes two passengers – head-in-air, Biggies stuff – Aberdeen to Sumburgh. That’s on Shetland.’

  ‘And is it OK? Does the Old Man know?’

  ‘Knows and approves. Reckons a break might do you good.’

  ‘Well, good on him! On you too, you must’ve—’

  ‘A short break is all it will be. It’s a one-off, obviously – just helping out. Your rank and experience, after all…’

  * * *

  He’d picked up the Ytteroerne light structure at a range of about three miles, recognising it by the sketch in the South Norway Sailing Directions and coming round at once to due north to stay clear of rocks shown on the chart. Vidlin had agreed: that was Ytteroerne, sure. But those rocks weren’t anything to worry about, you had deep water there, could pass within an oar’s length of them. Same on the west side of Frojen – a smallish island – and Bremanger, a large one, mountainous – on the north side of which was the way into Nordfjord. Dawn was about to rear its ugly head by this time, but mercifully the fog still hung around; in the bridge they were all living through their eyes, searching with binoculars not only for the Ekhorn but for enemy patrols. In the plot – chart-room – Ben had the windows covered and a spotlight on a gooseneck bracket pulled down low to the chart; there was virtually no spillage of light even into the rest of the little closet-sized compartment.

  He’d had Rosie in here with him, twice. Once soon after they’d sailed from Dartmouth, and then again for 10 or 15 minutes before bringing the boat in to land her at a Breton pinpoint called L’Abervrac’h. Getting to know her again, picking up the threads – trying to, in just minutes, after not having seen her for a whole damn year. Hadn’t known she was coming with them until she’d shown up, escorted by Marilyn Stuart, just before departure time. Rosie’s curvy little figure contrasting with the beanpole beside her – charming beanpole, attractive enough in her way, but… Rosie just happened to be – well, quietly sensational. Should be thanking God, he recognised, for having known her even for the short time – times – they’d had together. Known, loved, been loved by her. Absolutely bloody wonderful, every single minute – as long as the times had lasted, as long as you’d had reason to hope – pray – they’d start again.

  Vidlin said – beside him at the chart and pointing with a pencil-tip at Nordfjord somewhere near its entrance – ‘Here, OK.’ Pencil tracing the length of it, then: ‘Here, no good.’

  ‘Right, cobber.’ Looking at him – at the brown, spaniel’s eyes. Brown eyes, weather-tanned face, shaggy blond head and beard. Ben was re-growing his own beard, at least, he’d begun to. He added, ‘Won’t be going that far up anyway.’ He tried again: ‘There, not go.’

  ‘Ekhorn go. I say not good. I knowing this.’

  ‘Because of patrols and lookout posts.’

  ‘Sure. Here,’ – the fjord entrance – ‘to here’ – the head of the fjord, roughly – ‘kilometre, so many.’ Pencilling figures on the margin of the chart: 80, 90 … Stab of a blunt forefinger: ‘Ekhorn here maybe. Trysker I think here.’

  ‘Trysker meaning Germans?’

  ‘Sure.’ A thin pencil line across the width of the fjord. ‘Ekhorn finish, huh?’

  If she wasn’t finished already. But that was a point Hughes had raised in discussion with Nils Iversen – that escapers were more likely to be safely embarked if they made their way to the seaward ends of fjords or better still offshore islands. If the rescuing boat had to put itself at the wrong end of a fjord which might then become very difficult to get out of, it wasn’t improving the escapers’ chances any more than its own. Iversen had said he agreed, but on this trip for some reason had no option.

  His business. Not Mike Hughes’, and certainly not Ben’s. The Norwegian knew a lot more about it than either of them did. But then, Jens Vidlin wasn’t exactly a stranger to the business. Ben shrugged mentally; until one knew what had happened to the Ekhorn one couldn’t be sure the question was going to arise in any case.

  He reached for a packet of Senior Service, offered it to the Norwegian. ‘Smoke?’

  Shake of the head. Clink of the bridge telegraph then, on the heels of Hughes’ voice ordering the inners stopped. On the outer screws only therefore, and revs falling sharply: slow ahead on outers. Ben on his way up – into half-light and the lingering fog, Hughes and Ball hunched with glasses at their eyes, Bremanger a towering dark mass to starboard and Hughes telling Ben, ‘Patrol – there. Trawler, coming out of our fjord, cheeky sod.’ Then: ‘Come five degrees to port, Cox’n.’

  Holding her bow-on of course to minimise her exposure to the German. End-on, there’d be very little for him to see. You could thank God for the fog, and thank Vidlin for the fact that they were so close in, in the shadow of this mass of rock shielding them from light in the eastern sky. Without the Norwegian’s advice about the steep-to nature of the coastline Ben would have taken a wider sweep at it. Engine-noise meanwhile had fallen considerably: not only from lower speed and the centre engines out of it, Hughes must have told his PO Motor Mechanic to engage the dumbflows – silencers. Only a muffled thunder now. Ben had the trawler in his glasses: definitely a trawler profile, with a gun mounted conspicuously on its foc’sl. Probably a four-point-one. Moving slowly from right to left with a flicker of white at the forefoot – making six or eight knots, he guessed. The big question now was which way it would be turning, having cleared the fjord. If to starboard – away – fine, but if to port – well, rather less so. MGB 600’s guns would all be manned – Ball had been passing orders, and there’d been a swift movement of men on deck – and the German wasn’t likely to come off best; but the last thing one wanted here and now was a scrap of any kind. Besides which, when you were below your draught-marks with the weight of 100-octane in drums all over the upper deck, it wouldn’t take more than one hit from that gun—

  ‘Stop both outers.’

  Getting too close. So now just drifting. With your fingers crossed, begging that bloody thing to turn away to starboard…

  Chapter 5

  A hundred and forty kilometres, ninety-two-and-a-half miles: the figures clicking around in her head as she rode, encouraging herself with optimistic estimates of distance covered but having to make a couple of rather chancy detours to avoid the worst blockages of slow-rolling or actually stalled Wehrmacht transport. Those were in the first few hours out of Rouen – Louviers for instance, which she remembered from the day before as particularly bloody, and around Vernon, beyond which for a longish stretch she was blinded by the sun still low and in her eyes – and reluctantly accepting that rather than 92 miles it was going to end up as 100 at the very least. With, from time to time, rumbles of gunfire, she guessed at no great distance. Apart from that it was like a re-run of yesterday – could have been the same trucks, same exhausted-looking soldiery staring out grimly over their tailboards. Maybe grimmer, closer to the reality of their situation, fewer of the shouts and offensive gestures. She’d started out soon after first light, actually within minutes of curfew lifting – as advised by Ursule, who’d been up at c
ockcrow in her purple dressing-gown to provide a breakfast of porridge, ersatz coffee and an apple; she’d also sold her half of a large cabbage and a chicken – by no means cheaply, but that didn’t matter, as she had plenty of SOE money in the lining of her suitcase; it was a scrawny old bird that might have died of old age and/or starvation. She had those and her water bottle in the panier on the handlebars, wrapped in old copies of Le Matin and the more overtly collab paper Aujourdhui, which Ursule told her had ceased publication – as had several of the weekly rags including Au Pilori, Signal, Je Suis Partout and all those other filthy tracts with their savage anti-Jewish and anti-Gaullist diatribes. It was heartening to think of all those proprietors and editors on the run, vanishing (or hoping to) into the paysage – or the sewers, which might well be their rightful home. These week-old copies, though, she’d have had with her when she’d left Paris to forage in the countryside for sustenance for her little girl and the old woman, whom she’d left half-starving in some rented hovel in Montmartre. There was a café there, the Chien Bleu, which was where she had to meet her FFI contact, Georges Dénault, who had red hair and a limp and worked in the ticket office at the Gare de l’Est. It made sense to plant the child and its grandmother in that same district; until she got there they – and the chicken – would be her cover, notionally. And once she had got there, she’d be scouring the streets for them. It was an uncomplicated, believable and reasonably flexible cover story.

  A third diversion pushed her into more of a detour than she’d expected. By way of Beynes, and southward then it seemed interminably, over a railway crossing to a place called Le Pontel where at last she was able to turn east again. At the intersection where she’d been forced to divert southward, Boche tanks had been deploying on both sides across the hayfields. If one had had a transceiver – and of course a battery for it, which travelling by bike one would not have had – might have stopped in some copse or ditch and told someone about it. Anyway… all of 10 or 12 kilometres to cover before getting to Le Pontel, which when she got there she found was yet another interlocked confusion of Boche transport – in which she had the best of reasons not to get held up, one being the strong possibility of air attack: and very much as she had at one stage yesterday she found another way out, a minor road leading – again – more or less east. This had turned out to be another wide detour though: as she began to appreciate when after another dozen or so kilometres she found herself passing St Cyr, not far short of Versailles. Needing, if she was going to make it into Paris by way of the Porte d’Auteuil, to head up northeastward – making more for St Cloud than for Sèvres. Anything to the left, therefore… Reason for entering via Porte d’Auteuil being that it would bring her in close to the Bois de Boulogne and the 16th Arrondissement, in which Jacqueline’s flat according to Estelle was in a cul-de-sac off Rue de Passy. She had a name for the house but no number, and there’d be 2 or 3 kilometres of road to search unless she struck lucky early on. The name of the house was Le Clos de Fretay, which sounded fairly grand. If the route she had in mind worked out – she’d studied it on the map by candlelight at Ursule’s this morning, a map published recently by the War Office and based on a pre-war street guide – she’d be starting at the top end anyway: Porte d’Auteuil, then Boulevard Suchet all the way to the Ranelagh Gardens, and from there due south. Should then be near enough on target. Intention being only to locate the house so as to be able to go straight to it later – tomorrow, early. Secure one’s base first – primarily, find the Chien Bleu in Montmartre and get in touch with Georges Dénault, Hyatt’s FFI man, and find some lodging – possibly that same pub. Pinpoint Jacqui and Clausen first, anyway, then to Montmartre – 7 kilometres as the crow flew, say perhaps 10 by bike.

  And thereafter use the Metro? As long as it was running. Willoughby had said the last they’d heard was that on most lines there was a train about every 15 minutes when the power was on, on which you had to take your chances: an example of which was that the few theatres still open were using candles on stage, and cinemas had all shut. Re lack of Metro, though, in terms of the days ahead, to bicycle 5–10 miles when one had not covered 100 miles since dawn mightn’t be so terrible.

  Think about that in the morning anyway. Having been stiff enough this morning. Mightn’t be able to bloody move.

  After circling Versailles, she set a course north-eastward: facing about an hour of that. Thinking in terms of setting courses derived naturally from Ben, and brought him back to mind: not that he was ever far out of it. Wondering again what the rescue mission might be, in Norway; and how they’d let him, semi-crippled as he still was, go back to sea on anything, anywhere, in any capacity at all. Needing a stick just to get along a London pavement, how could he get around a motor gunboat crossing the Norwegian Sea?

  I’m not dead, Ben. Won’t get to be, either, if I can help it. Mind you come back in one piece, you bastard!

  (Epithet justified by a vision of the Stack woman also awaiting his return.)

  Through lack of concentration towards the end of that hour she almost missed a further course-alteration to the right which would surely have brought her to the Porte St Cloud. Telling herself that she wanted Auteuil, not St Cloud; but seconds later – at the last moment – realising that would be the best way and swinging off too late, entering the turnoff pretty well in the middle of the road, even somewhat over on the left, having then to dodge back across a lot of horn-blowing and waving fists, probably screams of rage. It paid off anyway – a kilometre ahead, no more, she was coming to the great river and to a bridge. Pont St Cloud? Go left there, then: over the bridge and—

  Damn. Control point. Poles on trestles, and Schutzpolizei stopping vehicles. All right, didn’t matter – thanks to her papers and the chicken. Which she’d noticed was beginning to smell a bit. Then as she got nearer she saw they weren’t stopping bicycles. Perhaps because they were all Schutzpolizei, had none of the usual back-up of gendarmes and were thus short-handed. She looked questioningly at one of them as she passed close to him, letting him see she’d be quite happy to stop and show her papers if he wanted her to. He didn’t, anyway; and she rode on through – then did have to stop, waiting to turn left; after which the river was on her left, and with this bit of the map in mind knowing that ahead of her was Longchamp and the Bois de Boulogne. Longchamp being on the great park’s western side. A kilometre or maybe two. Paris in front of her and the sun a glow of heat up there on her right. Chicken warm to the hand, inside its wrapping of newsprint. Traffic surprisingly thin here. Plugging on and keeping her mind on what mattered now – not making any more daft mistakes. Reminding herself that after passing Longchamp and turning left from Porte d’Auteuil, the steeplechase course would be about 3 kilometres ahead – eastern side of the Bois, so that by turning on to the Boulevard Suchet she’d then have it on her left all the way to Porte de Passy. Then right-handed, for a change – leaving Suchet, turning down into the Ranelagh Gardens, eastward down through the middle of them…

  * * *

  Getting towards 5 o’clock. Had been on the road therefore for 12 hours. Felt like it too. Pedalling slowly now, looking for culs-de-sac. Rue de Passy houses tended to be set well back from the road. As yet, though, not even one cul-de-sac. Several intersections and side-roads leading off at various angles.

  There…

  She’d passed it. High-walled and with tall double gates at the end of it, one of them standing open, the house creeper-covered and also tall, behind some kind of monument – statues, she thought, but had gone too far, had only caught a glimpse of it and was having to wait now to let a gazo van pass. Then, U-turn. Grey ivy-covered wall, and a thicket of trees on its other side, right up to the corner of the cul-de-sac into which she rode slowly. Looking for but not seeing any house name. On this one gate half of a coat of arms was visible, surmounted by half a coronet: the other halves of both were on the part that was open.

  Dilemma: whether to accept that this was the house – so turn back out into the
road and ride on, next point of aim Montmartre – or to nose around a bit, make sure.

  The open gate inclined one to take a closer look.

  Fine house. Light grey stone facade, beautifully proportioned windows, attractive wrought-iron balconies, slate roof with a graceful curve in it. A number of enormous chimneys. At ground level here, balustraded steps under an ornate porte-cochère leading up to double doors – what looked like mahogany. She was inside the gates by this time, still on the bike but stopped with one foot down on the gravel, seeing that the driveway encircled an area of grass with an ornamental pond and fountain which if it had been running would have been sluicing down on three nude stone girls grouped with their backs to it, arms linked and breasts uplifted.

  If the fountain had been running, might have been tempted to join them.

  Hold on, though. Beyond and to the right of that group – a dark grey Citroën Light Fifteen, close to the right-hand front corner of the house. The kind of Citroën that had always been Gestapo officers’ favoured form of transport. That colour, too, as often as not – grey or black. She’d seen quite a few of them in recent years, and if she’d spotted it sooner wouldn’t have come this far in.

  So drift off. Unhurriedly but wasting no time. It would be Clausen’s, obviously; he must have come home early. He was SD, not Gestapo, but that made no difference; Gestapo and SD worked hand in glove, and it was the Gestapo chief Boemelbourg who’d delegated to Clausen the interrogation of those prisoners.

  As soon as she’d seen the car she’d dismounted, was on the point of dragging her bike around in order to remount and take off – job done, this was the love-nest all right – when a voice called, ‘Allow me to drive out first, mam’selle?’