In at the Kill

by Alexander Fullerton

  ‘Fly them in when and where, find him and identify him how?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘You see, being a pianist, I could go down there, check the rocket-casing report – using the pub that man runs as my safe-house, incidentally – do the groundwork on the bombing – which as you say would be top priority – then deal with “Hector” – Marchéval – if he shows up. Point is I know him – I’ve spoken to him, been spoken to by him, I could pick him out in a crowd—’

  ‘Well – makes a degree of sense—’

  ‘I’d like to see it through, too. Where this started, you realize – in the train, talking with Lise, en route Ravensbrück – then the chance came up, a faint hope she might get away, purpose being precisely what she and I had been talking about – ensuring bloody “Hector” does not live happy ever after!’

  ‘Baker Street would agree wholeheartedly in all respects except that of leaving it to you.’

  ‘Despite the time factor?’

  ‘Well – I don’t know. But – it’s going to be their decision, anyway, I’m only guessing. Look – we might say something like Zoé proposes – as alternative to recall… But – do you honestly think you’re fit enough?’

  ‘Yes. I do. Am.’

  ‘Another aspect – has it occurred to you that it would suit Marchéval down to the ground to see you dead?’

  ‘Hadn’t thought about it.’ Blinking at him. ‘But – yes, I dare say…’

  ‘He knows all about you – must do. And it’s odds-on he’ll know you’ve escaped. When you met in the Gestapo building, would he have known or guessed that you knew who he was?’

  ‘He’d have realized I’d catch on, I think. There and then, of course, he wouldn’t have given a damn either way – I was as good as labelled “Ravensbrück” – which he couldn’t not have known.’

  ‘He’d know now, therefore, that if he went on trial you’d be the key witness.’

  ‘But they’re looking for me anyway, aren’t they? The Gestapo, I mean.’ She gestured dismissively. ‘He’s only their stooge, he’s nothing.’

  Guillaume thinking about it, gazing back at her across the desk. Giving up, reluctantly… Shaking his head as he reached for paper and pencil.

  ‘My bet stands – they’ll recall you. But let’s see now…’

  Eyes down: murmuring it aloud…

  ‘Agent code-name Zoé previously believed dead has recovered from wounds and is in the temporary care of this réseau… Might follow with: If immediate recall is decided upon, suggest early pick-up from Xanadu, subject confirmation.’

  Glancing up: ‘Xanadu is the field Lise went from. Reasonably easy reach from here. Confirmation depending on my courier taking a bike-ride to check that in the last couple of weeks it hasn’t been littered with tree trunks or concrete blocks.’

  She nodded. That sort of check was standard procedure. He went on.

  ‘But as alternative to her recall she proposes that she might be left in the field in order to track movements of the former agent ‘Hector’…

  ‘How soon will this go out?’

  ‘Oh.’ He paused in his scribbling. ‘Next scheduled transmission would be tomorrow night. So – emergency procedure, for this. This afternoon, I expect.’

  ‘Emergency procedure’ meant the réseau’s pianist having to conduct a two-way exchange with the home station – making contact, then getting confirmation that the signal was coming in intelligibly, then again that they’d received it, and there was always a heightened risk of such transmissions being picked up by German radio direction finders. Which was a steep enough risk in any case. Long-range detection to start with, then radio-detection vans positioning themselves for more accurate fixing, sometimes men on foot with headphones and radio packs. Then, the black or grey Citroëns, thugs in ill-fitting suits and soft hats… But she’d used emergency procedure often enough herself – recently in Brittany for instance, sending urgent requests for parachutages of weaponry for Maquis groups. Tapping the messages out in roadside ditches, mostly, the transceiver powered from a gazo’s battery, aerial-wire strung out between trees.

  And old Dr Peucat as look-out, puffing his pipe…

  Guillaume was having trouble drafting this signal. Scratching several lines out… ‘Here, Rosie – you’ve got it all clear in your head…’

  ‘OK.’

  She picked it up from the words movements of former agent ‘Hector’ – and added in her own rounder hand,

  by observation of Marchéval engineering works at St Valéry-sur-Vanne near Troyes, where he might be expected either when Rue des Saussaies evacuated or sooner if the factory or family residence were bombed or sabotaged. Factory is part of village so bombing would endanger workers’ families, whereas residence is isolated and occupied by German officers as well as by Marchéval senior. A safe-house in St Valéry is known to Zoé and she has introductions to local résistants. More importantly, research in last few days has elicited a report that the factory is now producing rocket casings believed by Resistance informant to be for V2s, casings’ approx dimensions length 12 metres and diameter 2 metres, which are shipped into Germany in Wehrmacht truck convoys at intervals as yet unknown. Suggest this calls for immediate investigation and, if confirmed, for early bombing attack, targeting residence as well as factory, which might also result in surfacing by ‘Hector’.

  She pushed it back over to him. Adjusting the soft-rubber padding in her cheeks while he looked over the lines she’d written; telling him as he finished and shrugged approval, ‘If they did give me the job, there’d be some things I’d want. For instance money, a pistol, cyanide pills, Mark III transceiver. And I think I might ask for a Eureka beacon.’

  ‘Lug that around with you?’

  The ‘Eureka’ was a ground responder navigational beacon, which came to life when triggered by a device in an aircraft called a ‘Rebecca’ on-board interrogator. It was in use all over France; but you could hardly have carried it on a bicycle, for instance. Rosie acknowledged, ‘I know – it’s a problem. Might make do with an “S” phone. With a Eureka I’d do without any battery, anyway. Scrounge one locally – or something. But incidentally, the American Eureka – PPN1, I think they call it – isn’t all that big. If one was available, of course.’

  ‘Common or garden variety weighs about fifty kilos, doesn’t it? “S” phone – what, about seven kilos.’ He paused. ‘Well – if they gave you the job – and in my book this is still only a matter of going through the motions – we’d do better to ask for the drop here, and make arrangements to get you and the gear moved down to –’ checking the draft of the signal – ‘St Valéry. Maybe with help from de Plesse. If Michel Jacquard’s strictures are still an influence… What about Michel himself?’

  ‘Gone. Unfortunately. Might ask de Plesse just to lend us a gazo – which he’d get back. I could drive myself down there and leave it with the man in Troyes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t advise it. On your own, and “wanted”. Not even if your papers are a hundred per cent. Are they, by the way?’

  ‘Maybe not quite a hundred, but—’

  ‘Anyway – as far as this is concerned’ – the draft of the signal – ‘I’ll mention that if they were leaving you in the field there’d be a shopping-list to follow.’ Shake of the head: ‘Won’t be, but – notionally, Rosalie: transceiver, “S” phone, cash, pistol.’ He’d begun roughing out a list. She prompted, ‘PC capsules.’ ‘PC’ standing for potassium cyanide, suicide pills. He’d grimaced slightly: ‘Here and now we’ll just say,

  If Zoé’s proposal that she should remain in the field is approved, a parachutage of transceiver, codes, “S” phone, cash, pistol and capsules etc, will be requested.’

  Glancing up at her: ‘What kind of pistol would you ask for?’

  ‘Llama, please.’

  He looked surprised. ‘I’d have thought something lighter, easier to carry hidden. Summer clothes, after all. A Beretta .32 for instance – reason I ask is it happens
I’ve one here you could have.’

  ‘Thanks, but Llamas suit me, and 9-millimetre’s easier to find than .32.’

  Quizzical smile: ‘Wouldn’t be fighting a battle, Rosie!’

  ‘No. But still…’

  Thinking, Just killing one man. Reaching to the desk, touching wood.

  Chapter 8

  She was smoking too much, she knew. One just crushed out and the next match flaring – in this small apartment above the hat-shop to which Guillaume had brought her an hour ago. He’d left her a whole pack. Black-market, obviously – the ration being only two packs a month, for God’s sake. Smoke-haze hanging in a thick layer: she got up, slid the nearer window further open to let some of it out. This was his pianist’s flat and she worked in the hat-shop under it: her employer owned it but had a house on the other side of town, apparently. Rosie had known, leaving the premises of Messrs Magne et Racke after a snack lunch of hard biscuits and cheese in Guillaume’s office, that they were going to visit the pianist, but he hadn’t mentioned her name or anything about a hat-shop; one could have been arrested in the street en route and interrogated until the cows came home, wouldn’t have been able to tell the bastards anything. So with no option but to hold out, you’d have suffered… Anyway, Guillaume had only said, ‘All right – if you’re ready?’ – and to his girl-assistant, Béa, ‘I’ll be out for a couple of hours, but I’ll probably call in at old Vasco’s stables – leave a message there if anything’s really urgent, eh?’ They’d left by way of the alley out to the street where de Plesse had dropped her, and turned left, heading further into the shopping centre. Southward: noting street-names where any were visible, walking beside Guillaume with a hand on his arm, about three steps to every two of his, Roxane’s skirt making that inevitable. Conscious again of her awful hair and make-up, pink blouse, new shoes noisy on the paving, Thérèse’s rain-jacket incongruously shabby but with room for her papers in its capacious inside pocket. Would have room for a 9-millimetre Spanish-made Colt-action Llama too – in due course – subject to decisions to be made in London, any minute now.

  She’d left Michel’s sketch-map of St Valéry-sur-Vanne in Guillaume’s desk. It had no words on it, a snooper wouldn’t have made head or tail of it, but if it had been found on Justine Quérier she’d have been expected to explain it.

  How? Mental exercise, while waiting to cross a road. Gazos, bicycles in streams. Over then, and turning left. Thinking of interrogation, how one might or might not stand up to it, because being out and almost on one’s own now, in a town where one’s face was plastered on street corners – and being in something less than the very peak of condition: knowing also that if she was caught again they’d make damn sure she stayed caught – unless she could convince them in the first five minutes that she wasn’t who she might have been. Explanation of that map, therefore – say it was the district of Sarrebourg – no, Souillac, where she’d been living with her sick mother. Sketch made to show a locum doctor, stranger to the district, how to find their terraced house in the Rue Celeste. There were a lot of people about, many just sauntering, idling away their lunch-breaks. Two Feldgendarmes shouldering through from behind: they seemed always to patrol in pairs, and there were far more of them on the streets than there had been a year ago in Rouen.

  Releasing second-line troops who’d now become frontline, maybe?

  Say priest, not doctor. Priest who’d offered transport to the hospital.

  ‘Over the road there – see?’

  Guillaume pointing with his chin. They were passing through a more or less triangular place that had a railed grass centre; the Feldgendarmes had turned in at a stone portico that jutted out ahead here, with a swastika banner drooping from a staff above it. Opposite, across the street and behind those railings, was a hoarding crowded with official notices. Guillaume gesturing again: ‘This end – one from the end?’

  Black and white. Others were framed in red – red and black being the Nazi colours, as on that filthy banner – and those were familiar enough, she’d seen dozens, wherever she’d been, notices of ‘executions’ carried out. The black-and-white poster on the left, though, at eye-level halfway up the hoarding – two side-by-side images – that they were of females was about all one could make out from here – with a caption in large black capitals and some lines in smaller print below that. Guillaume had muttered as she craned round, ‘See? Proof of your fame.’

  ‘Could we cross over?’

  ‘Better not.’ Tugging her along. ‘Feldgendarmes headquarters we just passed. Only take one of them goofing out of a window – wondering how to kill the next hour or two, getting you in his sights as you trip over to admire yourself…’

  ‘Any chance you might get me one?’

  ‘A poster?’ Nearing the end of the square. ‘Over here and then to the right there… I suppose – if they’re still on show when the balloon goes up.’

  ‘Get two, if you can? One for Lise – please?’

  ‘I’ll try. There will be a few other things going on, mind you. Along here now – Justine…’ To the right. She saw a tin street-sign, Rue St Jacques. Then they were passing a jeweller’s window – necklaces of amber and lapis lazuli in a small central display, second-hand items of costume jewellery around it. And next-door, now, a milliner’s.

  ‘We’re here. Keen on hats, are you?’

  The inscription on the shopfront was Pauline Delacroix, Modiste. Guillaume was giving Rosie time to scan the contents of the window, telling her quietly, ‘Pauline is a good friend, a résistante, and Léonie works for her and lives up there – over the shop.’

  ‘Your pianist – Léonie, right?’

  ‘Right. Makes hats too. Come on, plenty more inside. They make ’em out of everything you can think of.’ Pushing the glass-topped door open: ‘We’re in luck – I’d thought they might have been shut for lunch. In you go…’

  Into a powdery, hot-house atmosphere in which an auburn-haired woman, fortyish with an hour-glass figure wrapped in a smart black dress, was holding a pink, cloche-shaped hat in her two be-ringed hands, offering it – for Christ’s sake, they were in the shop and it was too late to back out now – to a tall Boche officer who’d glanced round sharply – irritably, even – as Guillaume pushed the glass door closed shutting out the street’s noise… He – the Boche – had thrown them that quick glance, then turned back to the woman. His long-peaked Wehrmacht cap, Rosie saw, lay on the glass-topped counter, incongruously close to a wide-brimmed, floppy-looking flowered creation. A Boche was about the last thing you’d have expected to run into, in here: getting off the crowded street had felt like arrival at some place of refuge – just for a moment, with what Guillaume had been telling her about this rather voluptuous woman, and the girl they hadn’t met yet. She felt breathless suddenly, and was trying to keep her face averted. Although Guillaume was taking it calmly: lifting a hand in greeting to the woman, who’d flashed him a smile and made a lightning scan of as much as she could see of Rosie in that same swift glance. Horrified by even that much, Rosie guessed – but showing nothing, switching the smile back to her customer, assuring him huskily, ‘It’s an excellent choice, Herr Colonel, I’m certain the lady will adore it. And for your daughter what do you think of this little model? Extremely chic, don’t you agree, while also definitely young – for a young girl as you’ve described her?’

  Guillaume was steering Rosie away to the left, into a longer, narrower part of the shop. The German muttering behind them in accented French, ‘This one I’m less sure of. But – come to think of it, I wonder…’

  He’d turned this way just as Rosie had risked a look back over her shoulder at them: thinking that she should not have been taken so much by surprise. France was full of Boches, there was no way you wouldn’t run into them here or there… Guillaume’s hand on her arm though, turning her back again – towards a nearer display of hats. ‘How about this one?’

  Made of velvet, a hideous shade of green. He couldn’t have meant it se
riously. Hadn’t, of course; only didn’t want the Boche making any closer study of her than he might have done already. She touched the green hat: shook her head. ‘Not really…’

  Guttural French behind them: ‘Do you think, Madame, you could persuade the young lady to assist us? There’s a slight resemblance to my daughter – very slight, I suppose, but – it might give one some idea…’

  Imagining this?

  ‘Guillaume.’ Pauline’s throaty tone… ‘Did you hear? Might the young lady be so kind?’ Clicking of her own articulated wooden soles as she approached: Guillaume had put himself on that side of Rosie, shielding her.

  ‘Much as I cherish our friendship, Pauline, I do not believe your customers should—’

  ‘But I don’t mind.’ Rosie patted his arm: had come up beside him, facing Pauline and beyond her the German.

  This wasn’t avoidable, had better be taken head-on. The German’s smile was as symmetrically curved as a child might have drawn it, on the round, pink face. Rosie added to Pauline, ‘Long as it doesn’t take too long.’

  ‘Extremely kind, Mam’selle…’

  ‘Although I wouldn’t have thought my suntan –’ addressing Pauline again, but the Boche cut in, ‘It’s primarily the hair-colour, also the general – should I say, combination of youth and – how to put it…’ With his hands, was the answer, outlining her size and figure. Presumptuous sod… Pauline and her scent in close-up then, though: ‘May I?’ Removing the scarf, and settling the little hat on Rosie’s head; adjusting its angle slightly, then stepping back. ‘There, Herr Colonel… Quite entrancing?’