Shadows over Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  A communication from Michel’s London chief, Mother Hen, a week before Christmas had done much to bridge the rift and bring him back “in” for all but Claude. The communique had instructed La Librairie to follow Tanant’s lead, doing nothing whatever to compromise his position with the Nazis. He had the complete support of British intelligence, the report read emphatically. There could be little doubt that the message was genuine. A personal note at the end had cautioned Michel to “have enough sense to know when to fold! We can get you out of France on twenty-four hours’ notice if necessary.”

  The final re-cementing of Michel’s position with La Librairie had come at the hand—literally!—of the boisterous Antoine. The big Frenchman had been sitting in a cafe waiting for a rendezvous with Michel. It was the end of December or the first week of January, thought Lise as she recalled it now.

  Suddenly without warning the place was swarming with French police, raiding it by order of the German command in the city to gather “volunteers” for the labor camps in Germany. Antoine had been brusquely lined up against the wall with all the other likely candidates when Michel had stumbled onto the scene. Without hesitation he had stepped up to the inspector, whom he had recently met in relation to his connection with von Graff.

  “What’s going on here, Inspector?” he had asked with authority.

  “You know how it is, Monsieur Dansette, we have quotas to meet that the Germans give us.” He chuckled nervously, by all appearance reacting with some deference to Michel, according to Antoine’s later recount of the incident.

  “Of course,” replied Michel. “I was speaking with General von Graff only yesterday about that very thing, and about resistors as well—they’re more my line, if you understand me, Inspector,” he added with a wink.

  “Mais oui, Monsieur Dansette. I hear you and the general are on the trail of L’Escroc!”

  “Keep it to yourself, Inspector,” said Michel with a meaningful glance.

  “Oui, Monsieur! You can count on me!”

  Michel then gave the group lined up against the wall a casual once-over.

  “You know, Inspector,” he said, “that man”—he cocked his head toward Antoine “—he looks like someone I’ve been after. A dangerous Frenchman. He may have a clue I need. Have him taken to a back room; I’d like to question him privately.”

  “But of course, Monsieur!”

  The inspector complied without further question.

  When they were left alone in the back room, Antoine had not known whether Michel’s true traitorous face had revealed itself, or if he, Antoine, had been saved from deportation to Germany.

  “You’re going to have to jump me and escape,” said Michel as if in answer to Antoine’s puzzled expression. “I know it’s not a great ploy, but it’s the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.”

  “What do you mean . . . jump you?” asked Antoine, still confused.

  “I mean knock the bloody daylights out of me, then beat it out that window!”

  “You can’t mean . . . ?”

  “I can, and I do—make a good show of it!”

  “They may not buy your explanation, and then you’d be in danger,” protested Antoine. “I could only face labor camp—you could be—”

  Suddenly there were sounds in the hall.

  “This is no time for a debate!” said Michel. “You’re going to be on your way to Germany if you don’t. I’ll fake some explanation. Now do it!” he ordered, presenting his jaw to his comrade’s powerful fist.

  Antoine had derived no pleasure from pummeling Michel’s face that afternoon, not because he was squeamish, but because just before his fist had made contact with Michel’s cheekbone, he had known. It was something he had caught in Michel’s voice . . . in the look of his eyes . . . some intangible sense that assured Antoine’s keen spy instincts that Michel was one of them. And if that were not enough, Antoine knew that in setting him free, Michel stood in danger of losing much more than he could ever gain.

  Claude, of course, had heatedly debated Antoine’s whole interpretation of the day’s events.

  “You’re just a sentimental French fool!” he blasted out. “Can’t you see he arranged the whole scenario, just to win your trust, and through you, ours!”

  “Perhaps that is what you would do, Claude,” said Antoine calmly but passionately. “But L’Escroc is much too clever for such a clumsy, obvious ploy. He was just as shocked as I when he walked in and saw the French police.”

  “Please, this arguing must stop!” intruded Henri. He knew Claude, and knew the discussion would get them nowhere. It was not good for the organization. It was time for a firm decision on La Librairie’s policy regarding Michel Tanant, alias L’Escroc, Englishman, leader in the French underground, and now, by accident it seemed, also a double agent in counterfeit league with the Germans. As he spoke, Henri’s eyes swept around the small room, and in that moment they were as hard and intractable as Claude’s. “We must be unified!” he said. “Thus, from this time forward, Michel Tanant will be fully accepted. I believe that events on the night of December fifth happened exactly as he represented them to us, and that he is still wholeheartedly with us. All of us will give him the same cooperation and loyalty as before. I am prepared to take full responsibility for this decision, so if you denounce Michel—you denounce me! If you cannot accept this, then make it known now, and be off!”

  Thus La Librairie weathered the formidable storm of the testing of Michel Tanant’s loyalties. He was restored to his place among them, though with a great deal more care now paid to secrecy. And if Claude remained bitter and surly, it was no more in evidence than it had always been.

  It should have been a time of great victory for the organization, now that Michel was able to filter intelligence directly from the Nazis. But Lise remembered that their coup was not without its difficulties. Any information Michel obtained could not be used without its being passed along the underground chain and acted upon in such a way that it could not be traced back to Michel. As a result of this constriction, many choice tidbits had to be overlooked completely; any resistance knowledge of them could only have come from extremely limited sources. They were forced to create coincidental-appearing triumphs over Nazi schemes so far removed from Michel’s involvement that often more time was necessary to set up the deceptions than they had.

  Still, much vital intelligence passed out of S.S. headquarters into Allied hands those months, with no one the wiser, except the British War Office, whose cause—sometimes independent of the French underground altogether—was helped tremendously.

  Another factor that always had to be figured into the formula of Michel’s double-identity charade was the simple fact that he had to prove himself to the Nazis as well. He had to feed them enough accurate information about the Resistance to make himself useful and to validate his loyalty to the Reich.

  This was understandably the most difficult aspect of the deadly game. For if his information always proved bogus or came just a day or an hour too late to do the Nazis any good, eventually their suspicions would be aroused. Many a late-night session was spent with Henri and the others, concocting scenarios that would play to von Graff, which would give the appearance of dealing deadly blows to the cause of Free France and the Resistance Movement, but which in fact would do neither, and in which never the life of a comrade was endangered. The task was not an easy one.

  Michel had played the double-agent game in England as Trinity. But when he fed the Abwehr information, only inanimate objects had been endangered—a few decoy ships or planes, anti-aircraft weapons the British could do without, an airfield, an out-of-service railway, an ammo dump from which ninety-eight percent of the stores had been relocated. But now with the Resistance, playing the double-loyalty game—at one time as Michel Tanant, another as Lawrence MacVey, then as Trinity, and to certain Parisians loyal to the Reich as Monsieur Dansette—involved people. He could not sacrifice human beings. Yet that was the most valued q
uarry sought by the Germans, who knew the underground had nothing if it did not have its leaders. Thus he had to betray without truly betraying, and risk as little as possible to individuals, appearing to give the Nazis much, while in fact giving them nothing.

  All the while, the rumors surrounding L’Escroc gradually grew, assuming the proportions of legend. Logan pretended to be moving ever closer. Soustelle’s hatred of MacVey intensified, and his determination to eliminate The Swindler grew to a passion.

  Lise had often wondered, in the months since, how Michel walked this precarious tightrope without cracking up.

  As the weeks passed into months, however, she began to see the fine lines of his face etched more and more with tension. No doubt he lived in constant fear of the inevitable moment when it would all crash in upon him. He once told her about a house of cards he and a friend had constructed in a London pub. Precisely leaning cards against one another, some vertically, some horizontally, they had built a tower almost two feet fall and employing some three decks. It had taken them hours to build, but in less than a second a gust of wind from the opening door had toppled their work of art into nothingness.

  He had to say no more. She knew it was exactly that fear which constantly gnawed at him day and night, that from some unforeseen corner a sudden change in the currents of his fortune would blow unsuspectingly upon him, unmasking the subtle charade he had so carefully built over himself.

  His own collapse perhaps he could bear. But by now he realized that he was the single card at the bottom-center of the tower. He cherished no vaunted ideas that the Resistance depended solely upon him—it would go on long after L’Escroc was a mere memory. But too many lives were now wrapped up in his game. If he made a mistake—a shady plan, a phony betrayal, a linguistic slip-up—lives would be lost. If he played the charade too close, tipping his hand, bluffing when von Graff held the winning hand, he could lead the Gestapo right to Henri’s bookstore. The Germans were said to be experimenting with drugs that made you talk, even against the determination of your own will. If he were captured and interrogated . . .

  Yes . . . Lise could see all these things weighing heavily upon him.

  When Michel had first come to Paris, she had sensed the thorough enjoyment he felt for what he was doing. She could still recall the boyish gleam in his eyes as he and the two British airmen had left Mme. Guillaume’s building right into the arms of the gendarmes. He couldn’t have enjoyed the ruse more!

  But it was different for Michel now. Lines of anxiety had begun to crease his forehead. She could read sleepless nights in the dark hollows under his eyes. The élan she had rightly attributed to him was still there, but it had become a mere frame in which a different kind of picture was now taking shape.

  She was both eager and afraid to see it completed. She had watched the underground life turn men into animals. Was not Claude a prime example? She hoped it didn’t have to be that way. She hoped somehow Michel could escape such a fate.

  Lise stole a glance at him as they bounced along the road toward Vouziers.

  He was staring intently ahead, as if he expected danger, even on this sunny July afternoon on an idyllic country road. Why did he intrigue her so, and cause her stomach to do strange things when he was near: She had to retain her distance. She could not allow herself to become so vulnerable—it was not healthy for either of them in their present circumstances. Yet, perhaps it was too late.

  Suddenly, even as her eyes were fixed upon it, Michel’s face paled, and his whole body tensed.

  “What’s this!” he groaned.

  Lise jerked her head around. Her eyes fell upon the most distressing sight imaginable.

  Directly ahead of them, stretching across the dirt road, was a German checkpoint.

  47

  Vouziers

  When Logan had reconnoitered the area two weeks ago, he had not seen so much as a bowl of sauerkraut. The only thing resembling authority in the region was a pudgy, middle-aged police inspector who, though no patriot by any stretch, collaborated with the utmost laziness. He had not even so much as asked Logan for a look at his papers, and Logan had enjoyed complete freedom to examine the town and study the airfield to insure that it still fit RAF specifications. He had even contacted the local Resistance, which consisted of an elderly farmer and his kindly wife.

  Now there were Germans everywhere.

  Had word of this mission somehow leaked out? Could he be approaching the final Waterloo for L’Escroc, as he had been fearing for weeks?

  Claude pulled the van to a stop behind an ancient truck, his features taut but more with malice than fear.

  “Claude,” said Logan from where he had crouched down in the back, thinking the three of them together might appear more suspicious, “can’t you try to look more like a vacationer and less like you’ve just slit a Boche throat?”

  Claude harrumphed angrily. “You just keep out of sight and leave this to me!”

  Lise shook her head and gritted her teeth against her own angry retort. Couldn’t they just once lay aside their animosity? True, Claude could be unreasonable, but why did Michel antagonize him at every opportunity?

  The truck coughed and sputtered on its way, and Claude pulled up into place.

  “Qù est le qui se passe? What is happening?” he said, in what seemed a genuine effort to assume an appropriate attitude.

  The soldier, however, had no intention of answering such a question, and instead replied with the most dreaded of German commands.

  “Ausweis!”

  The demand for identity papers should not have bothered these three, for everything they carried for travel and identity purposes was perfectly in order, having, in fact, been obtained through due process from the proper German departments in Paris. The anxiety rising in each stemmed more from the fact that secreted beneath a false floor in the back of the van were three wireless sets.

  Claude and Lise, in the front seat, handed their papers out the window and the soldier gave them a perfunctory glance, then handed them back. Claude reached for the gear shift, but the soldier was not finished yet.

  “What is in the back of the van?”

  “I don’t know,” came Claude’s unimaginative answer.

  Lise immediately leaned toward the window. “We borrowed the van from my uncle in Reims,” she said, “so we could tour the countryside, you know. We are on holiday from Paris.”

  “And that tarp . . . what is it covering?”

  Lise hesitated only an instant. “My brother,” she said, “he is asleep. He works all night in a factory. He was very tired.”

  “I must see his papers too. Wake him up.”

  Lise climbed in back and pretended to awaken Logan, who groggily rolled back the tarp. Lise took his papers and handed them forward.

  The guard seemed to scrutinize them a moment or two longer than the others, then handed them back inside.

  “Get out and open it up.”

  With but the faintest hint of a groan, Claude complied. Lise resumed her seat. Logan threw aside the tarp but remained where he was, praying that no one would want to search under the floor where he was sitting.

  The guard opened the back of the van, poked around, shoved about a couple of boxes they had placed there as decoys, cast Logan a final wary look, and finally closed the door and waved Claude ahead.

  Claude pulled the lever down into first and jerked back into motion, while his two passengers exhaled tense breaths.

  In another quarter mile they entered the little village of Vouziers. There were German soldiers everywhere it seemed, although those walking the streets paid them little heed. It was hardly a comforting prospect to think of trying to complete their mission under such circumstances.

  While dining in the restaurant of one of the town’s two hotels, they learned the cause of the sudden German interest in the area. An army contingent had arrived the day before responding to reports of the presence of several escaped prisoners-of-war in the area. Actually, the Germa
n command in Paris had received rumors that this little out-of-the-way village had become a regular link in the underground escape route. For two days all roads had been blockaded and patrols were combing the countryside. No one could say how long they might remain, but the hotel concierge complained that it was already cutting severely into the tourist trade.

  After dinner the three discussed what to do. Unfortunately, the radios they now had hidden in their rooms were only receivers brought for the specific purpose of intercepting the BBC broadcast. They had no transmitter; thus there was no way of contacting London about this hitch in their plans. They were all too worn out to consider a return to Paris only to have to turn around for another drive out to Vouziers. Therefore, they deferred their decision until morning.

  By the time they awoke, however, it seemed their problem had been solved in spite of their uncertainty. Two escapees had been recaptured some time during the night, and the Germans had pulled out before dawn.

  The successive days, while the weather continued fair, were peaceful ones, at least for Logan. Four days passed with no message, and he saw no reason why this excursion could not at the same time be viewed as a bit of a holiday for the beleaguered spies. Even Claude relaxed a little, though he spent most of his time in the cafes drinking too much black-market wine.

  Logan and Lise took full advantage of the great weather and the lovely countryside. Leaving the van parked to conserve precious fuel, they rented bicycles at an exorbitant price and explored the banks of the Aisne River and the woods surrounding the town. Except for the tense hour every evening when he bent over his wireless listening for the BBC, Logan gave himself over completely to the holiday atmosphere of the place. At times he practically forgot his reasons for being there and the necessity for a man in his position to remain constantly vigilant.