by Kurt Magenta
Lucien gave his real name.
Baumer nodded, ‘Confirms what they told me at your pub. Friendly types, by the way. Will you walk with me for a while, Cortel? We’re not actually enemies, you know, whatever our masters think.’
He started towards the harbour, giving Lucien no choice but to follow.
‘That may be the case,’ Lucien said, catching up, ‘but Muselier seems to think he has a monopoly on local recruits.’
Baumer frowned. ‘Look, this isn’t a game. Muselier is navy; it makes sense. To be honest with you, he thinks Passy’s mob are all amateurs and cagoulards.’
He’s not the only one, thought Lucien. He said, ‘Well I can’t just up and leave, if that’s what you want.’
‘Far from it. In fact I might have a job for you.’
As they walked he studied Baumer discreetly. The young man had a long, pale face and light blue eyes, a nose slightly too bulbous for handsomeness. The hair below the beret was brown with accents of red. Lucien guessed he came from Strasbourg, or somewhere close to the German border, hence the name.
‘Go on,’ said Lucien.
‘You know why we need these Breton fishermen, don’t you?’
‘To study coastal defences. Signs of potential invasion.’
‘Bien sûr, but there’s more to it than that. Over the next few months we’re going to send agents over to France. We need information from inside the country. That means informants. Radio operators, too.’
‘And the fishing boats will smuggle them in?’
‘A secret flotilla. The first boat leaves from here tomorrow night.’
‘And you need me because…?’
Baumer thought for a moment before replying. ‘Frankly, I don’t like the atmosphere around here. I can’t quite define it, but under the surface it feels hostile.’
Lucien couldn’t disagree – he had felt the same thing.
Baumer continued, ‘I’ll be aboard the boat to make sure our man reaches the other side safe and sound. But I could use some backup ashore. I’d be interested in knowing if anybody watches us a little too closely, if you know what I mean.’
German spies in Newlyn? But then again, why not? Since the start of the war – even before then – the natural order had been turned upside down. The most outrageous fantasies now seemed plausible. It occurred to him that the current gentlemen of the night might not be smugglers.
‘How can you trust me?’ he asked. ‘You don’t even know me. What if I’m working for the other side?’
‘I’ve been watching you, don’t forget. You’re one of us all right. So will you help me?’
He shrugged. ‘Very well.’
‘Good. Strictly entre nous, of course. Now let’s have some lunch. Have you tried their fish and chips?’
Lucien had – it always astonished him that cheap fish fried in flour, beer and salt could taste so good.
The place was surprisingly genteel, with lace-fringed tablecloths and polished cutlery. Over the meal, Lucien learned that Baumer had studied architecture – but his real passion was music, and he described himself as a ‘passable’ jazz pianist. This was common ground, so they spent a pleasant interval discussing the merits of Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
Then Lucien asked something that had been puzzling him. ‘Do the British know about Muselier’s operation?’
‘Of course – he’s running it in tandem with their naval intelligence people.’
‘Behind de Gaulle’s back?’
Baumer shrugged. ‘Not exactly, although I’m told le Général is less than happy about it. He can be pretty frosty about an idea when it’s not his own.’
When it was time to pay, Baumer added, ‘This business is all quite thrilling, but it’s not half as fun as playing in a band.’
At the edge of twilight it was still possible to see fairly well despite the blackout. Nonetheless, Baumer had equipped him with a hurricane lamp, an antiquated-looking item that now stood on the quay beside his feet. ‘It gives a more discreet light than an electric torch,’ Baumer explained. ‘Besides, it’s rather smart, don’t you think?’
Lucien was beginning to find Baumer amusing – the man would have been better suited to the stage than to espionage.
Now Baumer dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. ‘Le voilà,’ he told Lucien. There he is.
A figure approached – a man of middling height and age with a newish growth of beard. Dressed as a fisherman, haversack over one shoulder. He greeted Baumer and looked curiously at Lucien.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Baumer. ‘He’s from London. Covering our rear.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’re exactly on French time. Which is to say, fifteen minutes late. On y va?’
The two men strode up the pier to the small cutter that would make the crossing. For a brief moment Lucien wished he was going with them. He narrowed his eyes in the failing light to watch them board the boat. There were barked commands as the moorings were untethered and thrown onto the deck. Then the rattle-throb of the little diesel motor and the slosh of water as the vessel got underway. It reached the harbour exit within moments.
Lucien looked around. His gaze traced the low grey line of warehouses fringing the harbour. And there, in the lee of one of them, the glow of a cigarette. The man wore a fisherman’s cap pulled low over his eyes, but something about his stance was familiar.
Lucien began to walk towards him. The man pivoted and headed off at a fast trot. Lucien followed, struggling to close the gap between them. Night folded around him as he tracked his quarry across the street called The Strand and into a skein of narrow lanes. The man turned a corner, but his footsteps echoed.
Lucien kept on, unsure of what to do if he caught up. Question him? Find out what he was up to?
The figure took another sharp turn and Lucien hurried after him, almost at a run. But the street before him was empty.
It didn’t make sense.
Proceeding more cautiously, he made his way up the lane. Something on the fringes of his vision caught his eye. A timber gate, still open a crack in a mottled grey wall. Lucien went through it, into a small concrete yard beside a pebble-dashed house. He could barely see anything now, so he reached into his pocket for the safety matches he’d brought for the lamp. The scratch and flare of the match were alarming in the quiet darkness.
Jutting from the side of the house was a wooden hatch, about chest height, with a short sloping roof. It was too large to be housing tools. Before the match died he saw that the padlock was dangling open.
He moved forward and gave the door a tug. It opened without a creak, smoothly oiled. Concrete stairs descended, a dim electric light glimmering down there.
He went down two or three steps. He knew what he was walking into, but he had no choice. There was something he needed to know.
He called softly: ‘Perrow? Is that you? Tom Perrow?’
No answer. It took a lot to force himself down the remaining steps, his chest tight and his stomach bubbling with apprehension.
The steps opened out into a cellar stacked with crates and boxes. Some of them bore stencilled brand names he recognised. Whisky, gin, cigarettes.
The attack came from his left, very fast and hard enough to slam him into the wall, blasting the breath out of him. Perrow got one hand around his throat and pinned his right arm with the other. The man reeked of booze and tobacco.
‘I was right,’ Perrow said. ‘You’re a spy, a filthy Frog spy! Workin’ with the Jerries.’
‘Don’t be an idiot.’ Lucien had to force the words out. ‘I’m working with the British. Half of me is as English as you.’
‘That right? Prove it can you?’
Lucien brought his left arm up sharply and batted Perrow’s hand away. ‘Let me go and I’ll show you.’
Perrow backed off a little. ‘All right. Slowly now. You�
��re a sly one, I know that much.’
Still using his left hand, Lucien reached to unbutton the flap of his back trouser pocket. From it he withdrew his soldier’s pay book, with its rust brown cover and black serif lettering. He handed it to Perrow. The Cornishman flicked through it.
‘Looks real enough.’
‘It is real. And you should have one too, instead of doing…’ he gestured at the stacked contraband ‘…whatever this is.’
Perrow dropped the pay book and shoved Lucien back against the wall. ‘You say a word about that and I’ll have your guts, right? Fact you should just get yourself back to gay Paree, or wherever you come from. I don’t want to see you here again. Ever.’
Lucien knocked Perrow’s grip aside and stooped to pick up the pay book. Then he straightened himself. ‘Trust me, the feeling is mutual.’
He pushed past the Cornishman and got out of there. He was due back in London soon – and glad for it. He had seen quite enough of the gentlemen of the night.
Chapter 11
Secrets in the Attic
In pubs and on the Tube, they frowned over the newspapers. Bombs had dropped on Surrey and the outer suburbs. ‘Nuisance raids’, the papers called them, although they were clearly more than a nuisance, as one of them had left Croydon Airport in flames and punched holes in neighbouring factories. The air raid sirens were more frequent, and people had learned to fear the discordant throbbing drone of the German bombers.
The war was coming closer.
Most of the Free French were packing up and moving to larger premises at Carlton Gardens, but Passy had taken one look at the flashy white building and decided it was not for him. He had developed a taste for secrecy, which meant discretion. He had even taken to wearing a suit instead of a uniform.
So now they found themselves in a cramped seven-room space at the top of a dingy red-brick building in St James’s Square. ‘Secrets in the attic,’ joked Roché. The cluttered nature of their surroundings was enhanced by the fact that they had a handful of new recruits, making the nascent service feel larger and more legitimate.
Lucien had spent most of that period trying to stay one step ahead of the fangs of guilt. During the day, he selected and translated nuggets of ‘intelligence’ from piles of English-language newspapers and journals, the more obscure the better. At the same time, he made mental notes on his Free French comrades for Jasper Maddox. At night he drank and dined with them, constantly alert to the telling phrase, the slip of the tongue. Nobody escaped his scrutiny: Roché, Duquesnoy, Passy – even Chenard, the closest he had to a close friend.
As for Arnaud Vauthier, he had moved with the others to Carlton Gardens, where he was rumoured to have secured a high-profile post. Lucien didn’t set eyes on him for over a fortnight, until suddenly there he was at the bar of The York Minster, chatting up a pretty Free French secretary.
When Lucien used the excuse of buying a round to casually ask what had become of him, the Lieutenant replied in his customary patronising tone, ‘Let’s just say it’s a role the General finds me exceptionally well suited to. If you’d chosen your friends more carefully, Cortel, it might have been yours.’
Pushing the drinks across the bar, Victor smiled under his curled moustache. A twinkle in the pub landlord’s eye implied that he had heard part of the conversation. Or perhaps he was simply pleased to see a full house. Uniforms, suits and dresses were pressed together in the cloying heat as if hanging in a laundry.
Lucien picked up the drinks and moved away. But before he could reach Chenard at their corner table, he got an answer from an unexpected source.
‘So you know our Monsieur Vauthier do you?’ asked Sam Goucher, the Herald reporter, touching his elbow. The eyes behind the spectacles were hazy with alcohol. ‘What’s his story, eh? Rumour has it he’s some kind of political liaison for de Gaulle. Dreadful accent. Probably part of the bugger’s brief. Wants to keep us all in the dark.’
‘Probably,’ Lucien replied drily. ‘You always seem to know more than I do.’
He had spoken to Goucher a couple of times before, laying out in frank terms what he knew about the Free French and telling the story of his own escape from France. Goucher hadn’t been impressed.
‘You mustn’t fret about Inky,’ said a female voice from behind them. Lucien knew who it belonged to before he saw the cropped blonde hair, the WRNS uniform. ‘He thinks his ancestors were Huguenots. He’s made documenting the French in London his personal quest.’
Her eyebrows were darker than her hair; her eyes were dark too, and her long lashes. Her face was impish and lightly tanned, almost entirely free of make-up.
‘I’m not sure I like being part of a quest,’ said Lucien. He smiled at her. ‘But it depends on who’s doing the questing.’
‘Ooh la la!’ said Goucher, flapping his hand in mock admiration. ‘That’s one of the things I love about you bloody Frenchies. Don’t waste any time. I suppose I’d better introduce you: Monsieur Lucien Cortel, Miss Valerie Dancourt.’
‘Call me Val,’ she said. Lucien wondered if she was really with Goucher. The journalist wore a wedding ring – which of course meant nothing.
‘Dancourt. You’re French?’
‘Not quite, but my father was.’
‘My mother is English.’
‘Another half breed. How nice. I raise my half pint to you.’
Lucien remembered the drinks in his hands. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to make a delivery. I’ll be right back.’
But he got distracted by other matters, and it was a long time before he saw her again.
‘I see you were intercepted by our reporter friend,’ said Chenard, when he finally made it to their table. ‘What was he after?’
‘Gossip about Vauthier. It seems the good Lieutenant is now de Gaulle’s liaison with the British.’
‘Really? Soon he’ll be telling us he writes the General’s speeches.’ Chenard took a sip of beer and sighed. ‘Ouf! I needed that. So do you believe what Goucher and the others are saying?’
Lucien felt a warning twinge in his gut. ‘What’s that?’
‘As I said before – that the Free French are compromised. Riddled with spies and fifth columnists.’
‘For all I know, Georges, this pub is riddled with spies and fifth columnists. That’s what makes it so exciting.’
Chenard grunted. ‘Not exciting enough for me, I’m afraid.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Happily I’ve got a poker game in an hour.’
Since Duquesnoy had informed him that the bureau could not afford to pay for piles of English language newspapers, Lucien often found himself at Westminster Library. But the fact that he was obliged to absent himself from headquarters meant that he was also free to range further afield. He was still a journalist – and the son of a journalist – and he retained a reporter’s curiosity.
He was convinced there was an underground press that might provide an alternative view to Fleet Street’s carefully worded articles. For a start, he knew from his time at the Le Courrier that the British were not as united in their hatred of Germany as the official line suggested. Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists had held a packed rally at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall only the previous summer. Mosley’s view that it was preferable to appease Hitler had remained popular until the Nazis invaded Norway in April. A month later Mosley was imprisoned under new defence regulations, along with other suspected Nazi sympathisers.
But that didn’t mean some of them weren’t still out there.
A librarian who’d developed a somewhat maternal affection for him told him about a strange bookshop up in Hampstead. It sold antiquarian and new books, but had also been an unofficial hub for aristocrats and intellectuals who had supported appeasement and – to a greater or lesser degree – admired Hitler. ‘They think they can tame Adolf by letting him gobble up as much as he likes,’ as she put it. ‘Soo
ner or later he’ll get into a fight with the Russians. Then we’ll be spared.’
Lucien knew a little of this, but he had never heard it expressed so bluntly. And certainly not in England.
He headed for the Underground.
He loved the Tube. It was smaller than the French version, its cigar-shaped trains barrelling along single enclosed tunnels. Even their arrival was dramatic, as the rush of air stirred hat-brims, flapped newspapers and mussed hairstyles.
The carriages were perfect for people-watching. There were suits and uniforms of all kinds, accessorised with cigarettes and pipes and the occasional hip flask. He admired the way the women refused to sacrifice an ounce of femininity; whether they wore dresses, overalls or uniforms, their hair was always carefully waved and their lips often boldly red. Mrs Shaughnessy had even told him of a lipstick tube that doubled as a blackout torch. ‘I read about it in one of my periodicals.’
For Lucien, the attitude of Londoners on the Tube summed up their approach to the war. They were composed and resolute – and not without humour. He knew from his conversations at The York Minster that many of them believed they would prevail.
But what about those with a more ambiguous attitude?
He surfaced at Hampstead station into what appeared to be a village, with low redbrick houses and small shops that reminded him of pictures in a children’s book: here was the butcher, the fishmonger, the grocer. And of course the little Fascist bookshop, he thought.
Following the librarian’s directions, he turned up Rosslyn Hill and, a little later, took a right turn. The shop looked respectable under its dark green awning, with new titles displayed in big bay windows. As he stepped inside, a bell tinkled.
‘Good morning,’ said the slim, middle-aged woman behind the counter, in clipped upper class tones. With her grey hair secured in a bun and her sensible dark blue dress with white collar, she was not remotely sinister. ‘Here to browse? Or can I help you with something?’
Lucien had been thinking about his response. He decided to opt for something very close to the truth. First he explained that he was with the Free French and that he was doing some research for their ‘information department’. Before he could go any further, he had to answer her questions about the fall of France and his escape. Then he said: ‘My chief has asked me to build up a picture of England before the war. He’s very interested in social and political attitudes towards the Germans.’ He avoided the loaded word ‘Nazis’. ‘The policy of appeasement, for example.’
