by Kurt Magenta
Lucien turned back to Maddox. ‘Salaud,’ he said. Bastard.
‘You see? When it really counts, you’re French through and through. Quite the ladies’ man too, as befits your kind. So your friend will be coming with us. I hardly think Hayes will risk the life of an innocent young woman, do you?’
A huge bang, far closer than before. The lights flickered. At the neighbouring table a glass fell to the floor and smashed. A brief shocked silence was followed by a sharp rise in the volume of conversation. A handful of people got up to leave.
Maddox tilted his head to one side, listening for the follow-up. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘How close will they come, do you think? Shall we bet on it? Hit or miss? I wonder if Chenard would have liked the odds.’
The next blast shook the walls and knocked plaster dust from the ceiling. More tables emptied.
Albert scurried over. ‘Gentlemen, I really must ask you to leave. We’re all going to the shelter.’
‘Underground?’ Maddox raised a querulous eyebrow. ‘Hardly a place for gentlemen. No, Albert, we’ll stay right here.’
‘But it is part of my role to ensure –’
‘Albert!’
The waiter flinched at the sharp military tone. He glanced down at the cap and the wrist that disappeared beneath it. And then perhaps he understood, or at least got an inkling of, what was going on. A long shuddering boom like a storm overhead seemed to make up his mind.
‘Very well,’ he said, summoning a vestige of dignity. ‘I wish you luck.’
He left. Taking, it seemed, the remaining customers with him. But when Lucien glanced over at Valerie and her two guardians, they were still seated. The men glared at him – but he realised they were looking to Maddox for a signal. They wanted to get out too. Valerie lit a cigarette with trembling hands.
‘Dédé really is alive, you know.’ He reached for the note, but Maddox’s eyes hardened.
‘Hands visible please, Lucien.’
‘Very well. He says the Chorale circuit is still open.’
‘Hayes tell you that? Well, perhaps it’s true. One can never be too sure with his type. But it’s fair to say that Dédé is one of life’s survivors. Shame to drag your sister into it, though. You really shouldn’t have told me that.’
Lucien twitched. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s say Hayes gets me out. Perhaps I can protect her. If not, then I very much –’
Lucien was never sure whether the roaring crash came before or after the room began to fall apart. All he knew was that a blast of hot air swatted him into blackness.
The room cartwheeled back into existence. He gasped and coughed. He was on the floor, a rushing in his ears like a train speeding through a tunnel. He lifted his head and saw that he was sprawled near the table, the chair-back resting below his foot. A fine powder filled the air. He put a hand on the floor to brace himself, determined to stand, still coughing. The vision in his right eye was misty and when he wiped it his fingers came away dark with blood.
His memory returned in fragments. He swivelled and peered into the flickering orange-lit murk, looking for Valerie. No sign of her. There was a body, male, face-down under the table. Beyond that a patch of darkness, as if an entire section of the floor had been clawed away. Ashes drifted like flakes of snow.
Whoosh…another memory. Where was Maddox?
He spun back to where they’d been sitting. Saw a figure rising from the floor, ghostly with dust.
The table. The gun.
He charged the table, slamming into it with his thigh, grabbing it underneath and tipping it over. Objects rained to the floor: glass, ashtray, dice, lamp.
Gun.
He glanced down but felt a searing pain on his cheekbone as Maddox punched him. He reeled back and saw Maddox stoop, then rise again with the gun in his hand. Lucien unleashed a savate move, weight on his left foot, swivel-kicking with his right. It connected and he felt rather than saw the gun spinning away; but now he was unbalanced and fell again, shoulder and hips crashing into the floor.
He rolled, felt something painful digging into his rear. He scrabbled for it and came up with his own gun, aiming blindly.
But Maddox was no longer there.
Lucien stood drunkenly, confused. It was as if the man had dissolved. Then he remembered that their table was only a few paces from the stairwell – the exit.
The floor trembled beneath his feet.
Something burned across his left bicep. He turned and saw a bulky figure on the precipice of what remained of the room, gun raised. Maddox’s men: one down, one standing. For a second Lucien froze. But then he charged for the door, head down, running hard.
At his heels, the floor buckled and dipped. He crashed through the door and leapt for the stairs as the entire floor collapsed with an agonised groan behind him, leaving only a void of dust-choked air.
The staircase was made of solid concrete with an overlay of white marble, but it felt as if that was swaying too. He half-fled and half-plunged down it, tripping at the bottom and falling again, the gritty floor scouring his cheek.
He got up, head pounding, heart thudding. Maddox was climbing the pile of timber and rubble that blocked the way to the door. The collapsed upper floor had smothered the flames but the air was viscid with heat and dust.
Lucien’s right hand twitched – he still had the gun. He raised it, in that instant quite willing to shoot the man who had betrayed him, who had murdered his friend, who had threatened his sister. Maddox turned, looked at him. The Major’s hair was white with dust. Blood from a gash on his forehead cut a swathe through the powder on his face. He fixed Lucien with a pale gaze.
And grinned.
Then he carried on climbing. Lucien lowered the gun and dashed after him. By now Maddox had cleared the top of the pile and was clambering down the other side. Lucien shoved the gun into his waistband and followed, shattered stone and splintered wood gouging his palms.
At the top he jumped, managed not to fall, staggered out into the street.
The sky was orange with the false dawn of a heavy raid, reflected in the puddled street as if the tarmac had melted into lava. The air shivered with the bells of approaching fire engines, the humming basso profundo of German bombers.
Maddox stood with his back to Lucien. He should have been running, but he was rigid. As Lucien moved to one side, he saw why. Valerie Dancourt was standing in front of Maddox, her arm outstretched, pointing a gun at him. She must have snatched it from the dead man under the table.
The pistol’s muzzle barely wavered.
Lucien edged closer, until he was almost level with the Englishman. Her gaze flicked over to him before returning to Maddox.
‘He did it, didn’t he?’ Her voice was strained but steady. ‘He killed Sam.’
Lucien didn’t reply. Something was happening outside his field of vision, footsteps coming fast.
Maddox spoke to her instead. ‘Use that if you can. Do it now. Don’t think about it.’
He took a step forward. Valerie raised the pistol an inch.
‘Don’t worry,’ Maddox said. ‘There’s a war on. You’ll get a medal. Who knows? Perhaps one day even I’ll be considered a hero.’
‘You’re no hero. You’re a murderer.’
‘These days that’s just a matter of perspective. But even so, I don’t think you’re ready to join the club. Give me the gun.’
Maddox raised his hand, palm outstretched. He took another step.
Valerie said, ‘I didn’t love Sam enough. But he didn’t deserve to die.’
She pulled the trigger. Maddox flinched, clutched at his ribs, but didn’t fall. Very slowly he brought up his hand and considered the blood. He looked at Valerie. From this angle Lucien couldn’t see his face, but he imagined it to be full of contempt.
Another shot. Maddox steppe
d two paces back and plonked into a sitting position. He looked astonished. He said: ‘That was not…’ Then he coughed up blood and clutched at his stomach and lurched onto his side, knees drawn up.
A tall figure crossed in front of Valerie, strode up to the prone Maddox and shot him in the temple.
The body lay sprawled on the orange and red street as if it was falling into hell itself.
Arnaud Vauthier said: ‘I rather think it’s better this way, don’t you?’
Chapter 30
‘This is London…’
He found himself unable to stay away from The York Minster, now universally known as ‘the French pub’, even if its habitual bonhomie was undercut by a pang of sadness. Chenard gone. Goucher gone. And all that had followed. Only Valerie Dancourt, currently sitting opposite him, provided comfort and counsel. They were, improbably enough, just friends.
As Maddox himself had foreseen, the killing was swept under the carpet. Hayes’s team had arrived on the scene concurrently with an ambulance and the body was spirited away. And as Maddox had also predicted, there was no public avowal of his treachery. A discreet obituary in The Times spoke of his exemplary military career, his tragic death in an air raid.
For the past month, Lucien had heard nothing more from the British intelligence service. It was as if they had vanished into the blackout, the Inter-Allied Intelligence Group a closed file slammed into a dented cabinet. He could only hope that they would one day pass on a message from his sister – or at least from Dédé.
In the meantime he was back at St. James’s Square, scanning the English language press, hunting down uncensored documents, translating ‘interesting’ passages and compiling reports on potential Nazi sympathisers. He had become a pen-pusher.
‘Cheer up.’ Valerie touched the back of his hand. ‘Want another glass of wine? Or are you turning into one of those maudlin drunks?’
He raised his head and smiled at her, realising he’d been staring at the wine-ringed table. ‘No, of course not. Another glass, with pleasure. And then dancing. At the Café de Paris.’
‘Splendid idea! But first, it’s my round.’
She stood up and pushed her way to the bar, outwardly as extrovert and self-confident as ever. But she’d confessed that she was having bad dreams. Detonations, gunshots, a pair of pale blue eyes, the mingling of blood and rain.
A shadow fell over the table. ‘Cortel! Bonsoir, jeune homme. Comment ça va?’
He looked up, immediately recognising the long pale face with the slightly outsize nose that gave it an edge of humour. Frédéric Baumer.
‘Ça va,’ he said with mock irony, remembering their first exchange. He stood up and they hugged, clapping one another on the back. When they drew apart they were both grinning.
‘So you came back to the real war?’ Lucien teased. ‘Tired of toy boats and sandcastles?’
‘Working for the BBC, mon vieux. Radio Londres.’
‘Ah. Les Français parlent aux Français.’ The call sign of the weekly broadcast was already famous.
‘C’est exact. Want to come along and have a look? We have our own studio and everything. You can even send a message to your family if you like.’
‘In that case, I’ll certainly come.’
Broadcasting House, the home of the BBC, was a pale bow-fronted Art Deco building that resembled a giant radiogram plonked down in the middle of the city. It was less than ten years old, and to stand in front of its massive façade, even in winter darkness and slashing rain, inspired awe and an odd feeling of happiness.
Inside, he presented himself at the curved reception desk and was directed to the fourth floor, where Baumer hovered outside the lift. ‘Bienvenue, bienvenue…’
They pushed through double swing doors that bumped shut a couple of times behind them, then entered a small warren of corridors. One office door was open and Baumer stepped inside to present Lucien to a little pool of secretaries, making a great show of flirting with them and eliciting laughs and blushes. Lucien wondered if they rolled their eyes behind his back.
The next stop was somewhat more serious: Jacques Duchesne, who headed the Radio Londres operation. A jowly fellow with pouched late-night eyes and sparse hair, for whom a pipe was not so much an accessory as a physical feature. He wore a tweed suit and a navy bow tie with red dots, his voice grave and actorly. Which was fair enough, as he was, in civilian life, an actor.
‘You certainly pick your moments, jeune homme,’ he told Baumer. ‘Apparently Schumann will be here soon, and perhaps the General too, although as usual nobody tells me anything concrete.’
Baumer blanched and murmured an apology as they exited the miasma of pipe smoke. ‘Schumann is de Gaulle’s spokesman. Appears once in a while to rally the troops.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Come and take a look at the studio just the same.’ They set off at Baumer’s customary brisk pace. ‘This place is constructed like a walnut: all these offices are the shell, and at the kernel are the studios, bricked off and windowless so the sound can’t get in or out.’
The studio was disappointing: a blank box of a room in which a single scratched desk held up an ashtray and a microphone. The latter was a perforated metallic oblong, curved a little at the corners and about the size of a scrubbing brush.
‘Quite a beauty,’ Baumer told him admiringly. ‘She’s called the Type A – British through and through. They couldn’t afford the RCA microphone the Americans use so they designed their own.’
Through a large brightly lit window Lucien could see the top of the control room console. ‘That’s where you’ll stand when I start my chatter,’ said Baumer. ‘Got your message?’
Lucien dug it out and handed it over. Baumer read: ‘Lucien C of the 9th and La Rochelle is safe and sound across the waves. Affection and salutations to E and L.’ He folded it and tucked it into his breast pocket. ‘That should do it. Now come this way.’
As they stepped into the control room, people were beginning to take their places: Leclerc, a technical operator, who sat down at the big battleship grey console; a man named Hubert, who was to oversee the broadcast and provide cues; and finally an Englishman named Cavendish, who, Baumer explained, ‘makes sure we don’t say anything we’re not supposed to say’. A censor, then. (‘But don’t worry,’ said Cavendish, in badly accented French, ‘so far I’ve never had to intervene.’)
Lucien, an interloper, pushed himself into a corner. He was fascinated by the console, which bore a bewildering array of dials and switches. The technical operator attended to them like a pianist as, through the window, Baumer slid into his seat behind the microphone. There was a sudden hush, a red light went on, and Leclerc triggered the start of the broadcast: the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, which Lucien knew as the Morse for ‘victory’.
Hubert pointed at Baumer, who spoke into the microphone. ‘This is London. Les français parlent aux français. First, some personal messages…’
After a while the control room grew stuffy and close, and Lucien’s legs began to ache from standing. Time for a breath of air. He left discreetly and headed down the corridor. And then he wished he hadn’t, because a gaggle of men burst through the double doors at the far end and marched towards him. At the head of this peloton was the tall, avian figure of de Gaulle, a cigarette clipped between his fingers. Another man in uniform – perhaps Schumann – was close at his elbow.
For the second time that night, Lucien tried to make himself invisible. He stood aside to let the group past, gave one of his sketchy salutes and said, ‘Mon général…’
De Gaulle glanced in his direction, gave an equally casual half-salute, and continued on his way. Close behind was a young man with a lean, aristocratic face and a stubborn jawline. Lucien had heard of him: Geoffroy Chodron de Courcel, de Gaulle’s aide-de-camp, who had arrived in London with him. Making up the rear guard, Jacques Duchesne hurried after them with h
is pipe clamped in his teeth, glaring briefly at Lucien as he went by.
Lucien left the offices of Radio Londres and wished his message well as it winged its way across the airwaves.
The letter found its way to him on the second week of January 1941. It was addressed to ‘Lucien C. of La Rochelle’ courtesy of the BBC. Lucien imagined it had been smuggled into the unoccupied zone and then simply posted. It had certainly been opened – the envelope gaped and there was a censor’s tick in blue pencil at the bottom.
He read: ‘Dearest L. We were so pleased and surprised to hear your message. Thanks to you, your sister has returned to us, at least for now. She told me some of your story, which left me both astonished and afraid. Your uncle was very ill for a while, but he was looked after and I am told that he is back in good health. Life here is hard but we are surviving as best we can. Living near the sea has its advantages, and we eat better than most. We treat the situation as an inconvenience, nothing more. There are occasional flashes of defiance. In the cinema the other night, people began to stamp their feet and whistle tunelessly when Hitler appeared on the newsreel. The projection stopped and the manager appeared on stage wringing his hands and begging for calm. A few days later some hotheads tore a Swastika from the flagpole on the roof of the town hall. How they managed it I have no idea. In the dead of night, I suppose. One day, I believe, such small acts will escalate. One day we will be free. One day, I am certain, we will be together again as a family. Until then, I send you my love. Be careful. Maman.’
Most evenings, he walked swiftly through the streets of Chelsea, his speed a countermeasure against the cold. He wore a black overcoat with the collar turned up, a burgundy wool scarf, a grey fedora tilted to one side with a slightly self-conscious rakishness. Tucked into the top pocket of his suit were a pair of round tortoiseshell spectacles. They were the genuine article: an eye doctor had recently told him he needed them for close-up work.
