Into the Fire

by Into the Fire (retail) (epub)

  God bless you, Marilyn…

  Whatever you had to carry with you – Guillaume’s explosive, her own radio and the money – was the quickest and deadliest giveaway. Guillaume’s cover was probably quite genuine, and she’d got away with her story three times now – without even having to produce Louis’s letter, which if there’d been any doubts should have convinced them. But if either of their bags had been looked into – well, you could forget such niceties as cover stories.

  It meant the difference, in a matter of seconds and by some nauseating individual’s whim, between staying alive and free or being taken away to an extremely unpleasant death.

  There were bigger issues than that, too – objectively speaking. As the train pulled out of Rennes she was thinking – her head back again, eyes shut, pulse-rate gradually returning to something like normal – that in Guillaume’s case they’d have found the P.E. and perhaps aborted or postponed some sabotage operation; but there’d have been wider effects too, depending on Guillaume’s knowledge and connections and whether or not he gave way under torture.

  She thought most people did, unless they were lucky enough to have a propensity to faint in the early stages. But you didn’t know until the time came how you’d make out. It was a persistent anxiety: when Ben Quarry had said something about ‘the bravest of the brave’, for instance, the doubt had flared…

  * * *

  Vidor’s advice was simple but good, she thought: just don’t get arrested. What they’d have scuppered if she had been – if they’d looked inside her suitcase – well, a lot of things. For instance, there was the basic, long-term task of restoring an effective S.O.E. presence in and around Rouen, and the more immediate one of setting up arrangements for reception of two para drops. These had been pre-planned so as to minimize exchanges of signals; times and locations had been fixed, all that was needed was Rosie’s OK to Baker Street after she’d alerted the recipients, who’d then listen out for the BBC broadcasts.

  Then – in collaboration with César, of course – the reconstruction of the réseau. Sorting out Baker Street’s doubts about Romeo – ideally, getting him flown back for vetting – and the recruitment of sub-agents and couriers, establishment of safe houses, letter drops and so forth. Secure radio communications too, obviously, so that further drops could be arranged in due course. And on top of those S.O.E. functions was the job she’d taken on at the request of S.I.S., and which Maurice Buckmaster despite his own misgivings had admitted was ‘a matter of huge importance’ – to acquire intelligence of the Germans’ plans for deployment of their much-vaunted ‘Secret Weapons’.

  Research, manufacture and trials were known to be in full swing on the island of Peenemunde on the southern Baltic coast. One rocket had gone wild, landed on the Danish island of Bornholm, and photographs of it taken by a Danish naval officer and passed to the local Resistance had reached London. More recently a French agency – Amniarix – had amplified earlier reports including the fact that a Colonel Walther had been made responsible for selecting and constructing launching sites in the Pas de Calais and Seine Maritime départements. He’d not only set up his headquarters in Amiens, he’d taken on Jacqueline Clermont, alias ‘La Minette’, as his girlfriend.

  Which was where Rosie came in…

  ‘The urgency’s quite obvious.’ Buckmaster, in their talk in his flat two days ago, had had no argument with S.I.S. on that point. ‘Jerry knows as well as we do that before we can put an invasion force across the Channel there has to be a very large build-up of men and material here in southern England, and if he can deploy his damn rockets soon enough – well, it could make it impossible for us. For an invasion to be mounted at all. Which is unthinkable… Therefore, the sites have to be located so that the R.A.F. and the U.S. Air Force can hit them and keep on hitting them. Plus sabotage on the ground, which of course will be our pigeon. That’s all clear as day, Rosie, and it obviously is an absolutely top priority – nothing could be more so. But it’s still S.I.S.’s job, not what we’re for. This is my point: part of the reason they’re passing the buck to us is that we have people like you in the field, and my guess is they haven’t. Not in that region. Things may have been going to pot worse for them even than they have for us. And what you have to bear in mind, Rosie, while you’re pulling their chestnuts out of the fire for them, is that the Germans can’t be unaware of our interest in all this. So for God’s sake—’

  She’d said it for him: ‘—be careful. Yes, I will, sir. I’ll be very careful.’

  * * *

  Railway stations could be traps. One technique for an agent travelling alone and having reason to believe they might be looking out for him or her was to tag on to a family party or other group, try to look like part of it. But at Gare d’Austerlitz – the train had been diverted, would normally have come into Montparnasse: you didn’t query such things, which were often due to bomb damage or to sabotage – as they drew in she decided against this. She had a suspicion that the German plain-clothes officer might have stayed on the train – he hadn’t been on the platform when they’d pulled out of Rennes – and he might remember that she’d been on her own. Better therefore to remain alone. She had no reason to suspect that they’d be looking out for a female agent. But – for instance – what if ‘Romeo’ had been turned, told them ‘Angel’ was on her way?

  There’d be a check for black-market stuff here anyway. If you were carrying half a dozen eggs, or a chicken, for instance…

  ‘Madame?’

  She glanced round, and the younger of the two sisters asked her, ‘Do you have a place to stay, in Paris?’

  Hesitating, while she thought about it. She wouldn’t know until she’d seen Louis…

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s most kind of you, but I’m hoping my cousin will have made arrangements for me.’ She looked round again as Guillaume climbed down to the platform. He shifted the heavy case from one hand to the other, and raised his hat about a centimetre: just that, no word: she’d called ‘Good luck, monsieur!’ but he was on his way, probably hadn’t heard. Back to the sisters, then: ‘It’s very kind of you to suggest it—’

  ‘Well – if you find you do need a bed for the night, we’re in Vincennes. You take the Metro Porte Dorée. Here, look – take this.’ An envelope – she removed its contents – addressed to Mlle Hortense Velestier, at an address in Vincennes. ‘You’d find the number in the book. We’d truly be very happy – any time…’

  ‘You’re most kind.’

  So she had joined a group – and no pretence about it, all on the up-and-up. They were walking towards the barrier with a straggle of others around them and Guillaume’s grey trilby still in sight ahead. One of the sisters was a widow, the other unmarried; the widow had a son at medical school. They both thought that to work for a parfumeur would be heavenly: ‘All those glorious aromas – and perhaps a little bottle going begging now and then?’ Shrieks of hilarity, while getting their tickets ready to hand in at the barrier. Rosie saw Guillaume being arrested, at that moment. He’d passed through, and she’d had only a swift impression of two large men in plain clothes moving to intercept him: whatever was going on then was out of her range of sight, but having passed through the bottleneck, surrendering her ticket, it was exactly as she’d envisaged – and dreaded: the man who’d questioned them on the train was holding Guillaume by one arm, and the other was crouching to search the case that had plastic explosive in it. The sisters darting glances over their shoulders as they passed: Rosie heard ‘Black marketeer, perhaps…’ She was thinking – sharply aware of disaster, that one arrest almost always led to others – that with luck ‘Louis’ would be able to warn the réseau, in Auteuil – so they could scatter, vanish, or at least stay away from whatever parcel-drop or safe house Guillaume might have known of – and also notify Vidor, for Christ’s sake… The widowed sister was shaking her head: ‘Oh, the poor man, the poor man…’

  Dead man, she thought. He’d know it, too.

  ‘Now d
on’t forget – we’d truly be delighted—’

  ‘You may well hear from me. Thank you very much.’

  ‘And good luck with getting that job, my dear!’

  She let them go on ahead, down into the Metro. Feeling sick again: in dark contrast to the flood of relief she’d felt for herself and Guillaume when they’d seemed to have got away with it at Rennes. Cat and mouse, though: or as Ben would have put it, cat and bloody mouse. Oh, Ben…

  He’d be back in harbour by this time, she guessed, his image in her mind as she paid for her ticket at the guichet. And the gunboat’s, tied up alongside that old steamer, with the backdrop of green hills and woods. Vision of paradise…

  There were Germans on this platform too. Grey-green uniforms, rifles, packs, helmets, shaven backs to their thick necks. So obviously better fed than most of the crowd filtering around them.

  A train had just pulled out, northwards – the way she’d be going, two stops to Bastille. The kind-hearted sisters would be changing there, eastward for Vincennes, while she changed to the same line but in the opposite direction. Other travellers packing in around her: if any of them had been watching, following, she couldn’t possibly have known. There could be someone following: if for instance the man on the train had had some reason to suspect that she wasn’t as naive as she’d seemed. Guillaume had thought he was in the clear, after all.

  She and Guillaume might have exchanged one look too many?

  Her mental snapshot of him with the German’s hand clamped on his arm was still sharp-edged in her brain. Rattling through Hôtel de Ville, Louvre-Rivoli. Drab fellow-passengers uninterested in her, uninteresting in themselves, keeping themselves to themselves. Leaving Tuileries, she decided to break her journey at the next stop – which would be Concorde – to make certain she wasn’t being tailed.

  If she was, she was doomed anyway, but she didn’t have to lead them to Louis’s door.

  Concorde. Thinking about Vidor, to what extent he’d be in danger now. In a crowd of others, making her way up to the daylight. Wondering whether she might be only wasting time… But time wasn’t a major factor, in this predicament. Potential predicament – for all of them except Guillaume. In that sense it was very much a factor – in relation to getting warnings out to the others. Please God, Louis would have means of contacting them.

  Meanwhile, it would have looked more natural to be taking a stroll on this enormous Place if one had not been carrying a suitcase. As Guillaume would have been a lot safer without his luggage. Thoughts constantly returning to him… This vast open space was as good as you’d find anywhere for present purposes, though. Wandering unpredictably across it – then vaguely back again: bicycles everywhere – more bicycles than there were pedestrians – and vélo-taxis, pedal-powered rickshaws… Of course, if they’d guessed you’d eventually be going back into the Metro, they’d let you take your exercise and then pick you up again.

  So don’t go back in there?

  It was only two Metro stages to the Rond Point. Or one stage beyond that, probably – the Clémenceau station. Easy enough walking distance anyway, especially after sitting in that train all day.

  Walk, then, up the Champs Elysées. Resting for a minute first on a stone bench at the corner. Turning her face away from the Nazi banner and flags on what had been the Ministry of Marine: preferring to visualize the guillotine out there where it had stood a hundred and fifty years ago: the bloodthirsty crowd, thud of the blade, cheers for each spouting of blood, day after day… The human race didn’t change much with the passage of the centuries, remained just about as foul. Walking on – turning her back on that image too – up the Champs between green open spaces where anti-aircraft batteries were camouflaged and most of the fine old houses had been requisitioned – to the Rond Point, where she crossed to the other side of the avenue and paused to glance back before continuing. Nobody was following her. She hadn’t expected there would be, but there were other lives than hers at stake. Getting into the commercial part now. Progress seemingly so slow… After another age, over a crossing which she thought might be the Rue Clémenceau. Street signs in German, black lettering on white. Too soon, she guessed, to be the Rue la Boétie. She was limping a bit – not all the time, but whenever some piece of grit got into the wrong place in her shoe, but there were no benches around here; if she’d sat on her suitcase she might have attracted attention, looked like some sort of down-and-out, would feel conspicuous even if she wasn’t… There was a lot of passing traffic, a significant proportion of it military. Possibly all of it, give or take the limousines of high-powered collaborators. Civilian vehicles were mostly gazogènes. The limp reminded her that César was lame, that it would be a way of recognizing him. Otherwise all she knew was that he was fair-headed, blue-eyed and about five-nine. The clincher, anyway, would be the business of two coffee cups in front of him and both spoons in one saucer.

  Tomorrow, maybe. If she could get straight on down to Rouen.

  The larger intersection she was coming to now might – touch wood – be the one. A kiosk on the corner was smothered in collaborationist newspapers and magazines, some more notorious than others including even Le Matin, on which Maurice Buckmaster had once worked, as well as Signal and Au Pilori – about the vilest of all, with its vicious anti-Semitism. And La Gerbe, which ran it a close second. She was already in the approaches to what had been one of the most sophisticated of shopping areas – and still was, for Germans, who had the exchange rate heavily loaded in their favour. Thinking of Guillaume again: she shivered. Psychologically, she knew, a lot of this feeling of dread came from imagining oneself as being in his shoes. Passing a packed restaurant: tables all over the broad pavement, customers even standing in the spaces in between them. Roar of conversation. It was Le Colisée, she’d heard of it…

  Rue la Boétie. At last. Although from here on the directions weren’t entirely clear in her mind. She’d hadn’t thought of finding her way to the Maison Cazalet – Louis’s establishment – as calling for any great effort of memory. God knew, the memory cells were crowded enough… But to the left here, she thought. Or maybe – the next one, this looked – unlikely… Try the next. And if that didn’t look right either – well, if you got to the end – Rue du Faubourg St Honoré – you’d have come too far. Two more cars passed, both German. And from some distance, what might have been police whistles. She told herself, Not my business. Dozens or even hundreds of Parisians would be reacting (or non-reacting) in the same way: cover the ears, avert the eyes…

  Guillaume again: herself one of a horde of people passing by, ignoring it.

  But what else?

  This looked more like it, now. There’d be another turn a short way down: she wasn’t sure which way, but with luck it might be visible from the corner. Rather tucked away, they’d told her, but not far from this corner, in a setting of some elegance.

  There. Between two antique shops – handsome old houses actually, converted at street level into shops. One of them was boarded up, but next door to it – Maison Cazalet.

  An old woman, bent almost double, was coming towards her on this side of the road, and on the other a German officer and a girl in a flowered dress were gazing into the window of the antique shop. Moving on now, to gawp at whatever Pierre Cazalet alias Louis had on display. There was nobody in sight who was noticeably static, as a watcher would tend to be. That pair – the German and the girl? There were plenty of windows, of course, and doorways. She started down the road – on this side, not Cazalet’s: you couldn’t do much about windows, especially since experienced observers tended to sit well back from them.

  What might be happening to Guillaume, she wondered. Their usual practice was to leave a prisoner alone and without food for a day or two, to weaken his or her resistance, raise the anxiety level before starting the interrogations. But in his case they might not wait. He’d been about to deliver the P.E. to someone here in Paris, and they’d know that that person – or those persons – would be ar
ound now and might not be later on: certainly would not be once the news was out.

  Chances were they’d have started on him already.

  The hobbling woman wasn’t all that old. Just crippled. They’d passed each other: but two off-duty Boche soldiers were approaching from behind there, the way she herself had come. She saw them when she glanced back at the cripple, who was muttering to herself – cursing the soldiers, perhaps, her first sight of them as they’d appeared round the corner. Rosie went to the kerb, to cross the road: if those two overtook her they’d be likely to try to engage her in conversation. She knew from her own experience that they tended to, especially when you were alone and in an uncrowded street like this one. Better to stay clear of them: and to seem to be going somewhere, not just loitering – luggage or no luggage. The opening gambit would be an offer of assistance: smirking at each other, meanwhile. The Master Race, she thought: may they all rot in hell. Well, they would, if there was any justice: and if there was such a place as hell other than the camps, cellars and gas chambers in which they created it for their victims. She’d stepped into the road just before a Wehrmacht staff car swept round the corner, coming fast straight at her. A man on a bicycle shouted a warning as he swerved his bike, mounting the pavement just behind her; the car’s soldier-driver impassive and an officer in the back craning round to stare at her as if she’d been to blame.

  Damn French, jay-walking. Not disciplined, as we are… She was conscious of her own utter loathing of the bloody Master Race, Careful not to glance round when one of the soldiers behind her shouted something – shouting after the speeding car, safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t be heard by the officers inside it, and probably to impress her. She supposed that he’d be totally unable to comprehend that even if amongst his own people he might be thought of as a thoroughly good fellow, to any practising human being he was simply a trespasser in a country where even the pigs were more civilized than him and his compatriots, every single one of whom was by his mere presence an aider and abettor of practices that were utterly obscene.