by John Gardner
“History? A footnote to history, maybe.” George suddenly looked shocked. “Christ. Funny the way things come back. After all these years. That’s what I called Nostradamus—a footnote to history. That’s what I called him to old Ramilies when he put the whole thing to me.”
“A funny way to run a war, eh? Fighting with the words of a sixteenth-century astrologer.”
Herbie cleared away the plates and brought on the main course. He was assured in the kitchen, and did a respectable sauerbraten—a pot roast using silverside, complete with potato dumplings and a dish of red cabbage.
“It seemed crazy at the time. But one learns in the trade, Herbie. Misdirection is one of the blackest arts.” Then, rather proudly, “I was the first one in, you know. Whatever the books say, and despite the dreadful weather that winter, I was the first.”
“February ’41? Yes?”
George nodded and said something about being so young and cocky.
“As I understand it, George, the job was to make contact with a French source we did not know, and did not even trust completely. You were Caspar. He was Melchior.”
“Real name, Michel Downay. Put himself on offer through what channels were left after Dunkirk. A professor at the Sorbonne. Wrote a book about old Michel de Nostradame—published in 1939. Goebbels thought he could use him. We thought we could use him also, and we cooked up a story for me. They tried to get me into Brittany by boat but we got ourselves bounced by an E-boat and had to run away. Finally I got in by Lysander. First one,” he repeated proudly.
“I want the story, George. As you remember it; as it happened. Not just the dry words, but what you thought, what you did, what you said.”
“Tall order after so long. Why?”
“I’ve told you. Because I’m interested in someone who reckons they were there for part of it.”
“Caspar; Melchior and Balthazar,” George said to himself.
“We can always get a doctor.” Herbie’s smile made him look like a Halloween pumpkin. “Give you a shot of memory juice.”
No comment from George. Then, very slowly, he agreed but said the whole thing would take more than one evening. If he made errors…
“Don’t worry about those.” Herbie had him now. They could spend as much time as they wanted. All the time in the world. “Just try and think yourself back to being a boy of—what?—twenty? Twenty-one?”
About that, George was uncertain. “Was I that young? Can one remember what it felt like? I’ll try. Start with going in?”
Fine; Herbie thought it was fine to start there, even though he would have preferred to begin at the beginning—the recruiting and briefing. The great thing was that you couldn’t hurry a thing like this.
George took a mouthful of food and chewed gently, then swallowed.
“The pilot’s name was Bartholomew. I hadn’t remembered that in years. Bartholomew.”
So he began the story of the Nostradamus Operation and the Stellar network.
When going through the paperwork Big Herbie had come across many photographs: some were of George taken in the forties. So as the story started to be retold, Herbie tried to see the man opposite him as he was then—fresh, young, inexperienced, brash—a different shape even.
It had been a hard winter, George said. Snow, ice, sleet, fog, rain, and frost across most of Europe. On the night of February 26-27 it was clear and frosty. There was still a lot of snow, and the slight winds were bitterly cold.
Even with the central heating on after a reasonably mild spring day, George made Herbie shiver.
They had been told that the area for which they headed was free of snow. But Bartholomew, the Lysander pilot, was concerned because of the rock-hard frozen earth, which would not be level by any means.
There was a moon though.
12
FRANCE 1941
“A PROPHET IS NOT without honour,” said the shadow emerging from behind the poplar tree. George knew it was a poplar because they had told him to make for the row of poplars on the south side of the field. That was where the road was, and everybody knew that the roads of northern France were lined with poplar trees. There were pictures in all the best guide books.
“Save in his own country.” George completed the biblical quotation, breathless and chilled to the bone, even after running over the field as Fenice had instructed him. He spoke French, his Maman’s native tongue, which now had to be his own. For that he privately blessed Maman and thought of her—would he see her in Paris?
English rattled inside his head: the questions, last minute, to people like Ramilies (What if he doesn’t show his hand? What if he cons me and I don’t see him? If I suspect that one of them is unhappy, what’s the best lubricant?). Their answers were of no consolation now, near dawn in the freezing cold—over the top. Blue funk they’d called it at school, and down the shabby little terraced street where George had been brought, up, they were less restrained. Shit scared, they would have said.
On the far side of the field, the Lysander pilot gunned his engine. George turned, feeling a gust of wind tearing icy at his cheek like arctic spray, watching as the machine trundled forward. He imagined the smell of oil and airplane he had just left; the last odor of England.
Little jets of flame licked from the exhaust pipe along the radial cowling. She bounced once, crazily, before grabbing her thin, though natural, element, becoming a silhouette against the pearl sky, the gull wing tipping as Bartholomew banked and set a course for home.
George felt sick.
“Caspar?” asked the shadow, advancing. He clasped George’s hand, the palm sweating, in spite of the cold, inside the rough woollen glove. George asked if the shadow was Melchior, knowing that it couldn’t be, but observing the ritual which the dispatchers had drummed into him.
No, he would see Melchior in Paris. Tomorrow. A faint breath of relief because that was how it had been planned.
Other shapes were bearing down on them now, from where the Lizzie had taken off: probably the light carriers who had formed the triangular flare path.
Hands touched his back and shoulders in greeting, but he still wanted to vomit.
The shadow said his name was Marc as he patted George, guiding the party through the trees. It was a road on the other side: white, flat, and straight, crossed by weak bars of light—for the moon was low now—and edged with frosted grass.
Marc said it was two kilometres to the village, and that they would have to move quickly. You’ll be out of bounds. It’s probably the most dangerous part, Ramilies cautioned in the cottage near the airfield. The Curfew, he repeated at the farm, just before the off.
“The nearest military are over five kilometres away, and they don’t bother us much, but…” Marc left the whispered words dangling, trailing like ribbons on a child’s kite.
George thanked God—or the Devil, or whoever took care of moonlight riders—that they had provided him with only a small suitcase. There had been talk of a suitcase radio, a piano, but that sorted itself out. Got a pianist all set, centre stage, ready to give you a concert. Good as Myra Hess any day. Thus Ramilies.
He couldn’t see much of the village: just the outlines of the walls, which looked grey but appeared to change colour and texture as they got deeper into the single, short main street, the pavement narrow. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked and they stopped for a second or two. Then, into the square, unlit: a bar tabac, shuttered against the night or the occupying forces; on the wall a metal advertisement—Byrrh or Dubonnet.
At last, a door leading directly off the street. A series of knocks and a shaft of light as it opened to let them in. Just George and Marc. The others had faded outside the village.
The kitchen was warm. A single place set at a bare table, and two women standing near the stove. One old, like something by Bruegel the Elder, all black folds, small, like a bent tub; the other younger and skinny with a face that betokened a sharp temper.
They wished George welcome, without smiling, and he was made to sit
down and eat. He still felt sick, but the bread was better than he expected, while the soup, mainly potatoes, could only have been concocted in France. Marc brought out a bottle of passable rough rouge and they drank together, glancing slyly at each other across the table.
Eventually, Marc explained the situation, haltingly, as though the women did not know it all. A rendezvous was arranged with Melchior tomorrow in Paris. They did not want to know any of the details. Their job was simply to pass George on to Melchior (only he called George by the name Caspar, of course). The thin girl was his wife—Thérèse Abbo—and George was to be her brother-in-law. She would take him to Paris on the train, if the trains were running, and point him in the right direction. That was their job. No more, no less.
He presumed that George’s papers were in order, and George assured him they were, privately praying that they’d got it right at the other end. Somewhere, he thought, Epictetus had asked, “What is it to be a philosopher? Is it not to be prepared against events?” He hoped that Ramilies and company were philosophers.
They made up a bed in the corner of the kitchen and left him alone. Though he was warmer now it was too late for sleep. Maybe he dozed. Probably, but hardly any time seemed to pass before the place was alive again.
They left around six o’clock after mugs of foul coffee, during the drinking of which, Marc gave out some pertinent warnings. The trick, he said, was to behave normally. George felt sick again, knowing that it had nothing to do with the coffee and a lot to do with fear.
It’s the first few days that count, Ramilies had said. That’s the vulnerable period, when you’re acclimatising yourself and settling in. What did they know? They were all improvising anyway. Trying to get in by boat had been just as much an improvisation as the Lysander landing. Even his contact Melchior was an improvisation—Michel Downay of the Sorbonne, noted lecturer on social psychology, authority on superstition and the occult, not to mention Nostradamus.
Marc explained that there were spot checks on papers, particularly in the large towns and cities, but they were nothing to worry about. The Boche were too busy looking after their own. Sometimes you got landed with a pig of an NCO who had his eye on promotion, but on the whole they were okay, as long as you knew your place. George said he knew his place.
The old woman clattered around her stove muttering incantations. The newts’ eyes and ragwort were not visible, but George reckoned they were not far away. Just before they left she stumbled over with glasses of amber liquid for George and the girl. It tasted like raw spirit into which someone had dropped phosphorus.
As George came up for air, Marc was saying that the police were worse than the Boche, because, being French, their arses were always at risk. They had to work hand in glove with the bastards and uphold the new law and the new order. They upheld the new law: rigorously. If they didn’t, the Boche unscrewed their ears and their arses fell off. He spat. The old woman spat also—George wondered if it was into her cooking pot.
Outside, the drizzle came down like soaking woodsmoke, and Thérèse walked as though following a plough, eyes set firmly towards a fixed point on the horizon.
“How far?” George asked.
“Not far.” She inspired neither confidence nor desire. He was an unwanted incident in her life.
She stayed silent when they reached the station, and throughout the journey, during which they shared a carriage with three young German soldiers carrying regulation suitcases. There was also a well-dressed French couple. Everyone was very polite, and the soldiers, thinking, like all foreigners abroad at that time, that they could not be understood, talked of the leave they would have in Paris and the girls they would screw.
They steamed into the Nord a little after ten, and even the soldiers went out of their way to be pleasant, saying good-bye and nodding with touristy smiles.
George had always had a thing about arriving in Paris. Since the first time his Maman had taken him there he equated it with sin. The particular smell of the city’s railway stations brought out the old Adam in him faster than the scent of a beautiful woman.
The smell was just the same; and the noise and bustle. Steam rose from under the carriages, and smoke from the engines hung in the air. The same old bubble of Gallic volubility was everywhere, even French laughter, which seldom comes cheap.
The porters looked older than ever, and probably were, decked out in their blue de travaille. If he had expected to find a drab and cowed situation, then George would have been confounded, for it was all very familiar: like coming home.
Only when they got to the main concourse did things change. There were the usual crowds; the women seemed to be dressed as they always were, some even modishly turned out—though these were mainly the ones clinging to the arms of uniforms: German field grey. There were a lot of those. There were also a lot of posters: black, blaring headings calling Attention! There were flags as well, great red banners with white circles around the swastikas. But the smell of Paris was the same as ever.
At the barrier, a big peasant-faced lumpish boy in Wehrmacht uniform, rifle slung over the right shoulder, watched faces as the collector took tickets. The soldier wore a puzzled expression, as though his job was to read faces whose alphabets he had not yet mastered.
They came out onto the concourse, and Thérèse caught at George’s arm, turning him. He felt the movement was like that of some movie gunman’s moll setting someone up for a bullet in the back. For the first time, she showed emotion. She was not a bad little actress, for a peasant.
“This is where I leave you, Georges,” she said, and he wondered about her knowledge of his name. Marc had called him Caspar all the time, but his papers showed him as Georges Thomas—the addition of one small s to the Christian name made him fully French; with the Thomas pronounced Toma.
Thérèse pulled him close. “I shall kiss you as my brother-in-law and leave. You wave to me and then turn around. Melchior is right behind you, walking towards us now. He has a stick because of the limp. Good luck. God bless you.”
The limp he knew about. An accident in 1936: motorcycle up in Nostradamus country—Provence.
George watched her walk away, stopping, turning to wave then vanishing into the crowd, side-stepping a small detachment of German troops being led towards one of the platforms by a sergeant who looked as though he had been boiled and flayed.
George waited a moment and then turned, prepared to look as if he was searching the crowd. He knew Melchior, Michel Downay, immediately, in spite of his height and age, for which he was not prepared. Fenice, who had known Downay before the Fall of France, had not mentioned age, imagining that the photographs were enough. In the photographs he had looked older. George was expecting a man in his late fifties. Instead he was gazing into the same face from the photographs, though it appeared to have shed years. He could have been forty at the most: handsome, beard neat and trimmed, unflecked by grey; eyes bright and hard, mouth large, with lips which looked like good news for women.
George had also imagined him to be around five feet in height; he was just over six—maybe taller, for the limp looked painful and pulled him down a shade.
He was immaculately turned out, though possibly dated by a decade. Certainly the wide-brimmed hat was from another time, and George was uncertain about the cut of the dark waisted topcoat with the velvet collar. He felt very shabby, in the badly fitting clothes they had provided in England, when placed next to this dandy of a Frenchman.
Even with the bad leg, Michel Downay moved fast and straight; no crabbing, just a painful pegging at speed, using a heavy black cane as an extra leg.
Turn him inside out, Ramilies had said. He’ll know you, Fenice added. He’ll pick you up. It’ll be very public at the Gare du Nord, so you must follow his lead.
George did just that, hearing the words of his instructors all the time. At a distance of twelve paces or so, Michel Downay began speaking, shouting almost—“Georges, you’re here at last. Good…good…” and with
the last “good,” on a rising cadence, he was grasping hands and muttering close that a prophet was not without honour.
The handgrip was bone-crushing. George winced as he completed the greeting. Downay went on talking, fast.
“You must not worry. Don’t be afraid or act frightened. It’s all right.” We have company, he said: which meant a lift by automobile—a luxury.
The “company”, stood out in front of the station. Two officers. A major and a captain. An SS Sturmbannführer and an SS Obersturnmführer, complete in the slick smart blue uniforms with the gold-threaded lightning flashes on the lapels. Young, crisp, sharp as knives and full of confidence.
George recognised the type. They both had that same brand of ruthless charm he had seen in public shoolboys from England: the same arrogance, from the high gloss on their boots, to the raffish angle they wore their caps. They even clicked their heels, behaving towards Downay with measured deference.
Downay did the honours. George he called “My old and valued colleague, Georges Thomas.” The two SS men were SS Sturmbannführer Heinrich Kuche and SS Obersturmführer Joseph Wald.
13
LONDON 1978
“JESUS. I GET COFFEE?” Herbie Kruger rose from the table, hauling himself into the present. George sat looking at the wall, as if he were seeing it all over again. An Englishman arriving in occupied France to meet an unknown quantity contact who turned out to have chums in the SS.
Herbie indicated one of the other chairs and began to clear away the dishes. Coffee in a minute, he told George.
“At the station?” Herbie stood, his frame filling the doorway, half in and out of the kitchen, the coffeepot in his right hand. “The SS met you at the station?” With a series of clucking noises he went back.
When he came out into the main room with the tray, he found George settled in one of his padded chairs, smoking a small cigar.
Herbie said this was what he really wanted: the story from the horse’s mouth. Kuche and Wald were, naturally, in the files, but details like this—the landing, the weather, meeting Michel Downay at the Gare du Nord with the SS in tow—these were the things he wanted to hear.
