In at the Kill

by Alexander Fullerton

‘Anyway rotten judgement.’

  ‘Unacceptably rotten judgement. So rotten it’s cost lives.’ Looking at Rosie, reading her thoughts and nodding, in the candle-light: ‘Caused agonies. Horrors – as well as organizational disaster here and there. If “Hector” had been pulled out of the field three or four months ago, as he should have been, lives would have been saved and several blown réseaux would still be in place. Look, briefing you that day – you were flying out to the field where “Hector” was supposedly waiting – huh?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that a lot.’

  The bastard had known she was going to Rennes – where she’d met Lise in a public place. Noally had been so right…

  Rosie had been unwrapping the Llama pistol at this point in the palaver. It lay in her hand for a moment: flat, black and heavy, though not as heavy as a Colt. Sliding the magazine out, counting the seven rounds in it, then working the pistol’s action to ensure there wasn’t one in the breech as well. There wasn’t. She’d slipped the magazine back in, clicked it home… ‘What’s that now?’

  ‘Unwrap it and see.’

  ‘Like Christmas…’ Fleeting smile. Candle-light flickering slightly in a sudden draught that also set Marilyn’s cigarette-smoke swirling. Rosie had slid the Llama into her left-hand jacket pocket – the Beretta was in the right-hand one – and reached for this small object, pulled the wrapping off it…

  Lipstick holder. Marilyn said, ‘It’s silver. Belgian-made. Try unscrewing the bottom end.’

  The end, when turned, acted in the usual way, winding the pink lipstick out and pulling it back again. But the bottom part that turned had a gnarled ring at its base. She couldn’t unscrew it, though. Marilyn told her, ‘It’s a reverse thread. Undo it by screwing up – clockwise. But be careful – don’t spill—’

  It came off easily – a cap about the size of a sixpence. Up-ending it then, to tip its contents into a cupped palm, and guessing in that second what they’d be. Two cyanide capsules. The normal issue was just one, but on this last deployment she’d asked for two – which had been taken from her in the hospital in Morlaix. There was just room for them in the little secret chamber between the pink stuff and the base. She’d looked at them for a moment, cupped in her palm: thinking that Justine Quérier surely wouldn’t have had a silver lipstick, very likely wouldn’t have had one at all. But OK – Justine’s mother’s just pegged out, this was among her few effects… Glancing up at Marilyn: ‘My dear – what I’ve always wanted…

  She’d keep one capsule in the lipstick, decide on a different hiding-place for the other. No point having two if you kept them together. But think about that later… There’d been a wristwatch too, which she’d asked for in the signal. Marilyn’s own watch: she’d had it on her right wrist, with a newer, smarter one on the other; this one was suitably unsmart, but Swiss-made – strictly neutral – and Marilyn had assured her it kept perfect time.

  ‘Also luminous, please note.’

  ‘I’ll treasure it—’

  ‘Oh, it’s no treasure!’

  ‘– and I’ll bring it back.’

  ‘It’s a present. Just bring yourself back.’

  * * *

  No Hudson yet. Should have been on the ground a quarter of an hour ago: by now in fact should have been off the ground again and homebound. Delay made one feel nervous: as if there had to be a limit to good luck. Wait long enough, you’ll wish you hadn’t.

  Moon still well up, anyway. They were sitting on the rough grass now: a lot softer than the container.

  Marilyn yawned. ‘I’m not too happy about your papers, Rosie.’

  ‘Better than they were, believe me.’

  ‘I’d avoid road-blocks and checkpoints if you can. I mean, obviously you wouldn’t go looking for them – but try to use minor roads, and so on.’

  ‘Luckily they’ve only got to see me through for a few weeks. Touch wood. And once I’m in St Valéry, probably not moving around much—’

  ‘Extraordinary to think of, isn’t it? Just a few weeks… And probability, no pipe-dream…’

  Prospect of France in French hands, cleansed of Boches, ‘F’ Section therefore redundant, its staff and surviving agents demobilized. Marriage to Ben – like two new people in a new world – in many ways strangers to each other. Different people, really, they’d have to be… Lise had talked about this in Rennes, she remembered; about herself and Noally – whether things could possibly be as good between them as they had been in the bizarre, often terrifying circumstances they were used to, had become one might say their natural habitat. She’d postulated then, ‘Could be I can’t see us in another kind of life because we won’t be?’

  Springing from her belief in Fate. Whatever that was… But having lived this kind of life, it became about ninety per cent of what you were. Everything you knew, or – in Lise and Noally’s case – shared. Each of them in a way a refuge for the other. For herself and Ben it should be all right – she believed – because although they hadn’t been together in it he’d known all about it, certainly lived with it. Wouldn’t expect her not sometimes to scream in the night.

  Lovely Ben…

  Who’d better bloody not have committed himself to the Stack woman. Although he might have done – in reaction to shock, desperation – needing something. Even that crooked bitch.

  Marilyn said – emerging perhaps from some similar line of thinking – ‘You’ll need to find some new challenge, won’t you – when this does all suddenly come to a grinding halt. Even if you do marry Ben – which I’m sure you will—’

  ‘Were you head girl, at school?’

  ‘What makes you ask that, heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Just you sound like it, sometimes.’

  Soft laughter, in the moonlight. ‘Must stay in touch, Rosie. Whatever happens to either of us—’

  ‘Stand by!’

  ’Ah…’

  Guillaume, fitting the mike back over his face. There was a thrum of aircraft engines, she realized, so distant that at this moment it was more a trembling in the night sky than actual sound. They were on their feet: and it was already clearly sound, the kind they’d been waiting for. Guillaume with a hand out grasping old Déchambaud’s arm, warning him to be ready with the signal lamp but not start yet. It would be the letter ‘R’ again, as it had been for the Lanc. When the flashing started, Lemartin and Guérin would switch on their red lights, and the Hudson homing in on the ‘S’ phone’s beam would put itself down to taxi in midway between them.

  ‘Rosie.’ Marilyn had put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Certain you don’t want to hand over to someone else?’

  ‘Hell, yes!’

  ‘OK.’ Tighter squeeze before she let go. ‘Only asking.’ Rosie reflecting that it would have been too damn late anyway – her suitcase and other gear being in the van, couple of hundred metres away. They’d be wanting to save seconds on the ground, let alone minutes. Groslin trotting up then, pushing his Sten-gun strap over his shoulder; he’d be needing his hands free to help loading the container. He and Déchambaud; the other two would stay out there as markers for the take-off.

  ‘Make “R”, Fernand!’

  Engine-noise loud now, its note as well as volume rising. Rosie half turning from the lamp with a hand up to shield her eyes, save her night vision, but still getting the aura of the dot-dash-dot, dot-dash-dot. Seeing also then twin red pinpoints glowing: the Hudson was coming in, coming down, a flash of reflected moonlight from the Perspex canopy over the pilots’ cockpit – just that brief glimmer before it dipped into shadow below the tree-line.

  Invisible touch-down: then in sight again, the moonlight flickering on its twin props; the rest of it shiny black, stubby-looking, rumbling up this way between the red markers. Guillaume shouting – holding the mike away from his face, looking round at them – ‘All set – Marilyn? Got the bumph I gave you?’

  ‘Right here.’ Patting her chest, a bulge in the jump-suit.

  He’d nodded, yelled, ‘Good luck!�
� The ‘bumph’ was paperwork from him and/or others to Baker Street. The Hudson racketing up close, bigger now, slowing and stopping, then lurching around to point back the other way; Marilyn set off at a run towards the tail-section – this port side, the passenger door – and Rosie trotted after her. Déchambaud and Groslin were hefting the container: empty, two men could handle it easily enough, even run with it. The door in the rear of the fuselage had been opened from inside by one of the four-man crew: pilot and co-pilot staying put up front, tail-gunner visible in the moonlit transparence of his dome on top, machine-gun barrel jutting blackly, ready to cope with interference. Guillaume would still be in communication with the pilot over his ‘S’ phone. Marilyn now waiting clear of the open doorway while the two Frenchmen lifted the container up to it and others inside grabbed hold. Could have been passengers – a Hudson had room for twelve, this one might well have made other pick-ups or deliveries, or have others yet to make before its return to Tempsford. It would be an hour before the moon set. The container was inside, and a man in khaki reaching to give Marilyn a pull up: then the door swinging shut and the plane already moving – starting back to where it had landed, from where in about half a minute’s time it would take off this way, into the wind and over Rosie’s and the others’ heads. When it did come roaring, hoisting itself into the night sky, destination Tempsford – where Marilyn had said Lise would be waiting – the thought was inescapable that in some ways it would have been fantastic to have been up there too.

  In other ways, though – less so. If she had gone, she’d have been kicking herself by now and maybe for ever after for having chickened out.

  * * *

  ‘Because –’ she’d told Guillaume, in the van on the way back to the Déchambaud place, Groslin driving without lights and slowly enough to be able to swerve off the track and into the cover of the trees if necessary – ‘I’ve got to fix this awful hair. The dye I asked for? Make-up too. I’ve got to arrive there looking as I’m going to look, haven’t I?’

  ‘Of course. Hadn’t thought. But you’ll get hardly any sleep at all. We must start out pretty early.’

  ‘Sleep in the gazo on the way. Unsociable, but—’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘If we were stopped, I’d have been up all night with my dying mother.’

  She used the Déchambauds’ kitchen for the hair-dyeing and drying. Déchambauds upstairs in their own bed or beds, Guillaume on a pallet on the floor in the ‘small front-room’, as they called it. There was an armchair in the kitchen in which Rosie could relax when she’d finished: or at least doze, while her hair was drying a light chestnut-brown. It was an easy change from the scarifyingly bright yellow, and a welcome one, halfway back to her own naturally deeper brown: and wouldn’t look any different as far as the photo was concerned. The other priority job was to get the dark-tinted grease out of her skin and replace it with the Max Factor pancake make-up which Marilyn had brought. The light in the kitchen – two oil-lamps – wasn’t good enough to be sure, but she thought it was a huge improvement. With the rubber pads back in her cheeks she didn’t bear all that close a resemblance to Rosie Ewing either.

  Wouldn’t matter so much in Troyes anyway – probably still less in St Valéry-sur-Vanne. There’d hardly be posters of her and Lise that far from where they’d lost her. It was possible, but she didn’t think there would be. All right, you could still run into bad luck: if Justine’s papers looked phoney to some sharp-eyed Boche who then checked with Paris, say. But those were the risks everyone took all the time: and her papers weren’t that bad.

  One thing she had to decide was where to carry/hide the cyanide capsules. Or anyway one of them. She’d set out on this deployment with tiny pockets sewn into the hems of the two blouses she’d brought with her; still had them – the blouses, not the capsules – when she’d been moved from the Morlaix hospital to Fresnes prison – and had hung on to them, despite the problem of laundering without soap and under a cold tap, and sharing cells with thieves – so she’d been wearing one in the train and when she’d been brought blood-soaked to Thérèse’s farm. Thérèse had soaked it off her, but it had been bullet-holed front and back, hadn’t been worth trying to mend so they’d torn it up and used it for bandages. She’d come away from Thérèse’s with three others – one on, and two in the basket, all umpteenth-hand and much mended – and now had two more which Marilyn had brought… OK – decision time: leave the old ones here, take only the two fresh from London; and as time was short and one wanted to get some shut-eye – and with this poor light and not having a needle – just improvize, for now: open a little slot in the front hem – try it on one blouse anyway, see if you could insert a capsule then slide it along a bit.

  Kitchen knife. Using its sharp point to pick out a few threads. Working with narrowed eyes and a lot of concentration, close up against a lamp. OK so far… The seam was ironed flat, but the capsule could be worked along with one’s fingertips – a few centimetres, say. Must have ironed this blouse herself: an age ago, in that other world – in which Marilyn would be, by now – and she, Rosie, could have been. Shaking her head, lips compressed; fixing the second blouse the same way. Might borrow a needle and cotton from Ursule at breakfast-time, make a job of it – stabilize the access slit and put a stitch in a few inches along so the capsule couldn’t work round and get itself out of reach. When one needed to get at it – seeing this in her imagination quite easily, having been in such situations – one would be fiddling nervously, apparently out of terror but actually fiddling it round. As long as they’d left one’s hands free. Otherwise back in the cell, after the first session…

  She’d fixed the second blouse. Whenever she changed into a clean one she’d transfer the capsule. Crossing the room now to rummage the lipstick out of her jacket pocket: she unscrewed the cap, tipped the capsules out on Ursule’s tall pine-wood dresser and took one of them to insert it into the blouse she was going to wear. Working it round a few centimetres – a pinching action, as envisaged. Fine… And might as well change into this now – in fact change completely, underclothes and skirt as well – (a) while one had this privacy, (b) to be ready then for the breakfast call, not have to do so much in a rush.

  She had to more or less unpack the suitcase, to get out the things she wanted. Disrobing then: Ursule’s sweater on the table, and the rest of the stuff she’d been wearing – and didn’t ever want to see again – in a pile near the stove for Ursule to dispose of. Starkers for a moment: then dressing quickly: but pausing again, half-dressed, her eye caught by the lipstick-holder on the dresser. Wondering what to do about it.

  She didn’t think much of it. First because no Boche who realized it was silver would leave it in a prisoner’s possession. Some craftsman on SOE’s payroll had made a neat job of it, she thought, but rather pointlessly. Marilyn couldn’t have given it much thought either.

  So where, how…

  Handkerchief?

  Marilyn had brought her three, plain white cotton. Might sew one capsule into a corner of one of them?

  They’d leave you a handkerchief, probably. If you were sobbing into it – and they’d see it was no more than it seemed, a plain little mouchoir, no map or code printed on it. Seemed almost too simple, she thought. But it might be as good a way as any. Quicker than most, at that: corner of handkerchief into mouth, bite on it. Cyanide killed instantaneously, one had been assured several dozen times.

  Later, then, fix that up – in Troyes or St Valéry, when time permitted; and rather than borrow needle and thread, ask Ursule if she could spare some. Meanwhile, stick to the lipstick-holder – which one might take in the normal way in one’s – Léonie’s – handbag. Old scuffed leather bag on a carrying-strap. Some time on Saturday morning she’d muttered to herself damn, forgot to ask Baker Street to send a bag, and Léonie without a word had put this one aside for a parting gift. You’d have looked wrong without one – and God knew, she’d been looking wrong enough as it was.

  Lookin
g around, as she finished dressing, asking herself what else. Apart from letting her hair dry – which it would still be doing while she slept. (You couldn’t towel freshly dyed hair that was still damp, the dye’d come off on the towel. The hairdresser in Metz had put her wise on this.) There was something to be said for having such short hair, anyway. Another peek in the mirror on that dresser: even allowing for the rotten light, it didn’t look too bad. Wouldn’t want to arrive in London and meet Ben, looking like this, but – for present purposes…

  What she did have to do now was re-pack her suitcase. Better do it now too, not leave it to struggle with by first light. Should have slept all afternoon, she told herself, instead of sitting around smoking and gossiping with Léonie. The suitcase was on the floor, open, a pile of stuff on its lid. To start from scratch was the easiest way – everything out, – beginning by putting her new wireless codes, cash, the Beretta and the Llama and spare mags for both on the bottom. The inside of the case smelt faintly of eau de Cologne. She’d had the Llama in her jacket pocket, considered transferring it or the Beretta to her handbag but decided against it, at least on this trip today. To be caught with it at a road-block would mean instant arrest: and trying to shoot your way out of that kind of situation wouldn’t get you anywhere – not anywhere you’d want to be… She was packing the rest of the stuff now, had got about half of it in, then paused for a moment, cursed, took it all out again, and made a new start, this time wrapping the guns and magazines in a pullover and a striped towel which had never belonged to her – her flatmate’s, probably. But searchers of baggage just felt in with their hands sometimes – when they were only searching perfunctorily, as at a checkpoint, for instance.

  Now all the rest. And still the radio schedules to be memorized, then burnt.

  Pity Silvie de Plesse had had no key for this case. Although locked items were always of greater interest to searchers than unlocked ones. Just as luggage in plain sight drew their attention less than items you’d locked away in a car’s boot, or covered with a rug.