Ken Follett - Jackdaws

by Jackdaws [lit]

  She stepped to the table. "Ruby, can you hear me?"

  Ruby groaned. Flick's heart leaped: she was still alive. "I'll free you," she said. She put her Sten gun down on the table.

  Ruby was trying to speak, but her words came out as a moan. Swiftly, Flick undid the straps that bound Ruby to the table. "Flick," Ruby said at last.

  "What?"

  "Behind you."

  Flick jumped to one side. Something heavy brushed her ear and thumped her left shoulder hard. She cried out in pain, dropped her flashlight, and fell. Hitting the floor she rolled sideways, moving as far as possible from her original position so that her assailant could not hit her again.

  She had been so shocked by the sight of Ruby that she had not shone her flashlight all around the room. Someone else had been lurking in the shadows, waiting for his chance, and had slowly crept up behind her.

  Her left arm was momentarily numbed. Using her right hand, she scrabbled on the floor for her flashlight. Before she found it, there was a loud click, and the lights came on.

  She blinked and saw two people. One was a squat, stocky man with a round head and close-cropped hair. Behind him stood Ruby. In the dark Ruby had picked up what looked like a steel bar, and she held it above her head in readiness. As soon as the lights came on, Ruby saw the man, turned, and brought the steel bar down on his head with maximum force. It was a crippling blow, and the man slumped to the floor and lay still.

  Flick got up. The feeling was rapidly returning to her arm. She picked up the Sten gun.

  Ruby was kneeling over the prone body of the man. "Meet Sergeant Becker," she said.

  "Are you all right?" Flick said.

  "I'm in bloody agony, but I'm going to get my own back on this fucking bastard." Grasping the front of Becker's uniform tunic, Ruby heaved him upright, then, with an effort, pushed him onto the operating table.

  He groaned.

  "He's coming round!" Flick said. "I'll finish him off."

  "Give me ten seconds." Ruby straightened the man's limbs and strapped him in by his wrists and ankles; then she tightened the head restraint so that he could not move. Finally, she took the cylindrical terminal from the electric shock machine and stuffed it into his mouth. He choked and gagged but could not move his head. She picked up a roll of electrician's tape, tore off a strip with her teeth, and secured the cylinder so that it would not come out of his mouth. Then she went to the machine and fumbled with the switch.

  There was a low hum. The man on the table let out a strangled scream. His strapped-down body shook with convulsions. Ruby looked at him for a moment; then she said, "Let's go."

  They went out, leaving Sergeant Becker writhing on the table, squealing like a pig in the slaughterhouse.

  Flick checked her watch. Two minutes had passed since Jelly lit the fuses.

  They passed through the Interview Room and stepped out into the corridor. The confusion had died down. There were just three soldiers near the entrance, talking calmly. Flick walked rapidly toward them with Ruby close behind.

  Flick's instinct was to walk straight past the soldiers, relying on a confident air to get her through, but then she glimpsed, through the door, the tall figure of Dieter Franck approaching, followed by two or three other people she could not clearly see. She stopped abruptly. Ruby bumped into her back. Flick turned to the nearest door. It was marked Wireless Room. She opened it. The room was empty. They stepped inside.

  She left the door an inch open. She heard Major Franck bark in German, "Captain, where are the two men who should be guarding this entrance?"

  "I don't know, Major, I was just asking."

  Flick took the silencer off her Sten gun and flicked the switch for rapid fire. She had used only four bullets so far, leaving twenty-eight in the magazine.

  "Sergeant, you and this corporal stand guard. Captain, you go up to Major Weber's office and tell him Major Franck strongly recommends he conduct a search of the basement immediately. Off you go, on the double!"

  A moment later, Franck's footsteps passed the Wireless Room. Flick waited, listening. A door slammed. She peeped out. Franck had disappeared.

  "Let's go," she said to Ruby. They left the Wireless Room and walked to the main door.

  The corporal said in French, "What are you doing here?"

  Flick had an answer ready. "My friend Valerie is new to the job, and she came to the wrong place in the confusion of the blackout."

  The corporal looked dubious. "It's still light upstairs, how could she get lost?"

  Ruby said, "I'm very sorry, sir, I thought I was supposed to clean here, and no one stopped me."

  The sergeant said in German, "We're supposed to keep them out, not keep them in, Corporal." He laughed and waved them on.

  Dieter tied the prisoner to a chair, then dismissed the cook who had escorted her from the kitchen. He looked at the woman for a moment, wondering how much time he had. One agent had been arrested in the street outside the chƒteau. Another, if she was an agent, had been caught coming up the stairs from the basement. Had the others come and gone? Were they waiting somewhere to be let in? Or were they here in the building right now? It was maddening not to know what was happening. But he had ordered the basement searched. The only other thing he could do was interrogate the prisoner.

  Dieter began with the traditional slap in the face, sudden and demoralizing. The woman gasped with shock and pain.

  "Where are your friends?" he asked her.

  The woman's cheek reddened. He studied her expression. What he saw mystified him.

  She looked happy.

  "You're in the basement of the chƒteau," he told her. "Through that door is the torture chamber. On the other side, beyond that partition wall, is the telephone switchgear. We are at the end of a tunnel, the bottom of the sack, as the French say. If your friends plan to blow up the building, you and I will surely die here in this room."

  Her expression did not change.

  Perhaps the chƒteau was not about to blow up, Dieter thought. But then what was the mission? "You're German," he said. "Why are you helping your country's enemies?"

  At last she spoke. "I'll tell you," she said. She spoke German with a Hamburg accent. "Many years ago, I had a lover. His name was Manfred." She looked away, remembering. "Your Nazis arrested him and sent him to a camp. I think he died there-I never heard." She paused, swallowing. Dieter waited. After a moment she went on. "When they took him away from me, I swore I would have my revenge-and this is it." She smiled happily. "Your foul regime is almost finished. And I've helped to destroy it."

  There was something wrong here. She spoke as if the deed was already done. Furthermore, the power cut had come and gone. Had the blackout already served its purpose? This woman showed no fear. But could it be that she did not mind dying?

  "Why was your lover arrested?"

  "They called him a pervert."

  "What kind?"

  "He was homosexual."

  "But he was your lover?"

  "Yes."

  Dieter frowned. Then he looked harder at the woman. She was tall and broad-shouldered, and underneath the makeup she had a masculine nose and chin...

  "Are you a man?" he said in astonishment.

  She just smiled.

  A dreadful suspicion dawned on Dieter. "Why are you telling me this?" he said. "Are you trying to keep me occupied while your friends get away? Are you sacrificing your life to ensure the success of the mission-"

  His train of thought was broken by a faint noise. It sounded like a strangled scream. Now that he noticed it, he realized he had heard it two or three times before and ignored it. The sound seemed to come from the next room.

  Dieter sprang up and went into the torture chamber.

  He expected to see the other woman agent on the table and was shocked to find someone else there. It was a man, he saw immediately, but at first he did not know who, because the face was distorted-the jaw dislocated, the teeth broken, the cheeks stained with blood and vomit
. Then he recognized the squat figure of Sergeant Becker. The wires from the electric shock machine led to Becker's mouth. Dieter realized that the terminal from the machine was in Becker's mouth, secured there by electrician's tape. Becker was still alive, twitching and emitting a dreadful squealing sound. Dieter was horrified.

  He swiftly turned off the machine. Becker stopped twitching. Dieter grasped the electric wire and jerked hard. The terminal came out of Becker's mouth. He threw it to the floor.

  He bent over the table. "Becker!" he said. "Can you hear me? What happened here?"

  There was no reply.

  Upstairs, all was normal. Flick and Ruby walked quickly through the ranks of telephone operators, all busy at their switchboards, murmuring into their headsets in low voices as they plugged jacks into sockets, connecting decision-makers in Berlin, Paris, and Normandy. Flick checked her watch. In exactly two minutes all those connections would be destroyed, and the military machine would fall apart, leaving a scatter of isolated components, unable to work together. Now, Flick thought, if only we can get out...

  They passed out of the building without incident. In seconds they would be in the town square. They had allmost made it. But, in the courtyard, they met Jelly- coming back.

  "Where's Greta?" she said.

  "She left with you!" Flick replied.

  "I stopped to set a charge on the diesel fuel line in the generator room, like you said. Greta went on ahead of me. But she never reached Antoinette's place. I've just met Paul, he hasn't seen her. I came back to look for her." Jelly had a paper packet in her hand. "I told the guard at the gate that I just went out to fetch my supper."

  Flick was dismayed. "Greta must be inside-hell!"

  "I'm going back for her," Jelly said determinedly. "She saved me from the Gestapo, back in Chartres, so I owe her."

  Flick looked at her watch. "We have less than two minutes. Let's go!"

  They ran back inside. The switchboard girls stared at them as they raced through the rooms. Flick was already having second thoughts. In attempting to save one of her team, was she about to sacrifice two more-and herself?

  When they reached the stairwell, Flick paused. The two soldiers who had let them out of the basement with a joke would not let them in again so easily. "As before," she said quietly to the others. 'Approach the guards innocently and shoot at the last moment."

  A voice from above said, "What's going on here?"

  Flick froze.

  She looked back over her shoulder. On the staircase coming down from the top floor stood four men. One, in major's uniform, was pointing a pistol at her. She recognized Major Weber.

  This was the search party Dieter Franck had asked for. It had appeared at precisely the wrong moment.

  Flick cursed herself for a bad decision. Now four would be lost instead of one.

  Weber said, "You women have a conspiratorial air."

  "What do you want with us?" Flick said. "We're the cleaners."

  "Perhaps you are," he said. "But there is a team of female enemy agents in the district."

  Flick pretended to be relieved. "Oh, good," she said. "If you're looking for enemy agents, we're safe. I was afraid you might be dissatisfied with the cleaning." She forced a laugh. Ruby joined in. Both sounded false.

  Weber said, "Raise your hands in the air."

  As she lifted her wrist past her face, Flick checked her watch.

  Thirty seconds left.

  "Down the stairs," said Weber.

  Reluctantly, Flick went down. Ruby and Jelly went with her, and the four men followed. She went as slowly as she could, counting seconds.

  She stopped at the foot of the stairs. Twenty seconds.

  "You again?" said one of the guards.

  Flick said, "Speak to your major."

  "Keep moving," said Weber.

  "I thought we weren't supposed to go into the basement."

  "Just keep going!"

  Five seconds.

  They passed through the basement door.

  There was a tremendous bang.

  At the far end of the corridor, the partition walls of the equipment chamber exploded outwards. There was a series of crashing sounds. Flames billowed over the debris. Flick was knocked down.

  She got up on one knee, pulled the submachine gun out from under her overall, and spun around. Jelly and Ruby were on either side of her. The basement guards, Weber, and the other three men had also fallen. Flick pulled the trigger.

  Of the six Germans, only Weber had kept his presence of mind. As Flick sprayed bullets, Weber fired his pistol. Beside flick Jelly, struggling to her feet, cried out and fell. Then Flick hit Weber in the chest and he went down.

  Flick emptied her gun into the six bodies on the floor. She ejected the magazine, took a fresh one from her pocket, and reloaded.

  Ruby bent over Jelly, feeling for a pulse. After a moment she looked up. "Dead," she said.

  Flick looked toward the far end of the corridor, where Greta was. flames were billowing out from the equipment chamber, but the wall of the Interview Room seemed intact.

  She ran toward the inferno.

  Dieter found himself lying on the floor without knowing how he had got there. He heard the roaring of flames and smelled smoke. He struggled to his feet and looked into the Interview Room.

  He realized immediately that the brick walls of the torture chamber had saved his life. The partition between the Interview Room and the equipment chamber had disappeared. The few pieces of furniture in the Interview Room had been thrown up against the wall. The prisoner had suffered the same fate and lay on the ground, still tied to the chair, neck at the horrid angle that indicated it was broken and she-or he-was dead. The equipment chamber was aflame and the fire was spreading rapidly.

  Dieter realized he had only seconds to get away.

  The door to the Interview Room opened and Flick Clairet stood there holding a submachine gun.

  She wore a dark wig that had fallen askew to reveal her own blonde hair beneath. Flushed, breathing hard, a wild look in her eyes, she was beautiful.

  If he had had a gun in his hand at that moment, he would have mowed her down in blind rage. She would be an incomparable prize if captured alive, but he was so enraged and humiliated by her success and his own failure that he could not have controlled himself.

  But she had the gun.

  At first she did not see Dieter but stared at the dead body of her comrade. Dieter's hand moved inside his jacket. Then she lifted her gaze and met his eyes. He saw recognition dawn on her face. She knew who he was. She knew whom she had been fighting for the past nine days. There was a light of triumph in her eyes. But he also saw the thirst for revenge in the twist of her mouth, and she raised the Sten gun and fired.

  Dieter ducked back into the torture chamber as her bullets chipped fragments of brick off the wall. He drew his Walther P38 automatic pistol, thumbed the safety lever to the fire position, and pointed it at the doorway, waiting for Flick to come through.

  She did not appear.

  He waited a few seconds, then risked a look.

  Flick had gone.

  He dashed across the burning Interview Room, threw open the door, and stepped into the corridor. Flick and another woman were running toward the far end. As he raised his gun, they jumped over a group of uniformed bodies on the floor. He aimed at Flick; then a hot pain burned his arm. He cried out and dropped his gun. He saw that his sleeve was on fire. He tore off his jacket.

  When he looked up again, the women had gone.

  Dieter picked up his pistol and went after them.

  As he ran, he smelled fuel. There was a leak-or perhaps the saboteurs had holed a pipe. Any second now, the basement would explode like a giant bomb.

  But he might still catch Flick.

  He ran out and started up the stairs.

  In the torture chamber, Sergeant Becker's uniform started to smolder.

  The heat and the smoke brought him back to consciousness and he cried for hel
p, but no one heard.

  He struggled against the leather straps that bound him, as so many of his victims had struggled in the past, but, like them, he was helpless.

  A few moments later, his clothes burst into flame, and he began to scream.

  Flick saw dieter coming up the stairs after her with his gun in his hand. She was afraid that if she stopped and turned to take aim at him, he would be able to shoot first. She decided to run rather than stand and fight.