Into the Fire

by Into the Fire (retail) (epub)

  ‘Yes. You certainly don’t look – forty, is it?’

  ‘Thirty-eight.’

  ‘Certainly don’t look it… Why are you in Rouen now, though?’

  ‘I’m spending my last six months in the place where my wife and I were so happy. I’ve enough money to live on – living carefully, of course. Which reminds me, Angel—’

  ‘Yes, I’ve brought a million francs.’

  ‘A million…’

  ‘It was decided that to set up a whole new réseau from scratch—’

  A quick nod… ‘Where’s the money now?’

  ‘Hidden with my transceiver. I’d be delighted to be relieved of it – the money, that is.’

  ‘This evening? At the Belle Femme?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘It’s where I’m living, you see.’

  ‘Living?’

  ‘I have a room on the top floor. They know my story – I only want a quiet life, some cognac when they can get any – black market prices of course – you know…’

  ‘I’ll bring you the cash this evening, then.’

  ‘Do you have any immediate financial needs yourself?’

  ‘Not at the moment. But Romeo does. I told him you’d be bringing it, so—’

  ‘Right. Let’s talk about Romeo… By the way –’ his hand rested on her forearm – ‘the first job I’ll have for you, Angel, is to tell London I’m here and getting down to work, and a few other rather important things as well. In fact important and quite urgent.’

  ‘Tomorrow, if you like. Have to pump up my tyres, that’s all. Bicycle. I’ll only be transmitting from outside the town, you see. Baker Street’s orders – because of the other interceptions – if that’s how the information about those drops got out. In any case it doesn’t seem like very safe ground here, I think it’s a wise precaution. Have they given you all the background?’

  ‘That the former réseau was infiltrated, drops went wrong, all of them were arrested except this Romeo – that background?’

  She nodded. ‘So London aren’t all that sure of him. They want him back, to debrief him.’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘Didn’t you know it?’

  ‘That he’d have been under suspicion is obvious. That’s why I asked you about him. Have you met him, or only spoken?’

  ‘Met him. I believe he’s straight too – as it happens. But going back to what you were saying – I’m to tell Baker Street you’re here, etcetera – fine, I’ll do that. But the thing is, my orders are to transmit as seldom and as briefly as possible and never from the same place twice. And never from Rouen itself. Well, obviously another fairly urgent job is to get out into the country and make contacts for future drops. Make up for lost time. Romeo made this point – that our Resistance friends are beginning to feel let down. I’ll get around mostly by bicycle, anyway – longer distances by train, I suppose – I can be on my way to Amiens or Neufchatel or wherever, to sell scent, and I’ll make whatever transmissions you want en route.’

  ‘Very well.’ His eyes were on the river. Downstream, quite a large ship was being turned around by tugs. César told her, ‘May have to send it in more than one transmission. Twelve hours and some kilometres apart, perhaps. Up to you, Angel, that’s your department. But – so much to sort out, isn’t there – of one kind and another… What you’ve just told me – no transmitting from Rouen, all that – I agree, it’s wise—’

  ‘Romeo was warned off the air altogether, at the crisis time, and it still holds, because of the risk his code’s broken – but he told me he was only too pleased to pipe down, the direction-finders were homing in on him. He saw the vans.’

  ‘Lucky for him.’

  ‘He’s very experienced, very cautious. They got close to him in Orleans once, apparently, he’s alert to the technique.’

  ‘What I was going to say – apart from transmissions, to receive signals from London—’

  ‘Yes. I’ll arrange listening-out schedules. Haven’t done so yet because you weren’t here and I didn’t know what might have happened to you, it seemed better to keep my head down. But with this next transmission I’ll suggest I listen out three nights a week, from there on. I’ve already reported my own arrival, by the way – and that you weren’t at the café last Thursday, and I’d contacted Romeo. Oh, and that he was willing to be picked up, please arrange… Come to think of it, I’d better get back to them pretty soon on that anyway.’

  ‘I’d like to meet Romeo soon, too.’

  ‘Well.’ She hesitated… ‘They’d hardly send him back to this réseau, would they? And he may be leaving us quite soon – they were anxious to have him back, and now they know he’s willing… It’s possible he’ll want to keep his distance. As I said, he’s very cautious.’

  ‘Where’s he living?’

  She didn’t answer at once. People passing slowly, staring at them…

  Eventually: ‘I don’t know where he lives. Didn’t press him to tell me, either. He attributes the fact he wasn’t rounded up with the others to having been careful to stay away from them. His only réseau contact was with the Organizer – someone called Max. He trusted him and no-one else, and evidently it paid off. That’s why I have some doubt—’

  ‘You telephoned him, did you, at the number we were given?’

  ‘Because you weren’t here.’ She nodded. ‘Otherwise I’d have left it to you. But he might have known what had happened to you – and there was no other way I’d have found out – could have waited for ever!’

  ‘Yes.’ Rubbing his jaw, eyes on the river… ‘Yes, I understand that. And I could get in touch with him myself, I have that same number. Obtained it – also the routine for my rendezvous with you – from a man code-named “Fabien”, in Lyon. He was arrested that same day – which is what sent me on my travels, instead of coming here. But – back to the point – Romeo – rather than I do it, you might arrange for him to come to the Belle Femme with you this evening?’

  ‘I’ll try to. I’ll come with the money anyway.’

  ‘It’s a question of recognition, mostly. Easier if you bring him. And if he’s in need of cash?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll try.’

  ‘Where are you living, Angel?’

  She pointed. ‘Over there, Rive Gauche. I only moved in yesterday. Before that I was living over a baker’s shop – a family to whom I was sent by Louis – my employer – and I must warn him somehow, they have a pro-German daughter, it’s not all that safe.’

  ‘So where—’

  ‘Best way – well. If you go over Pont Corneille – up Rue La Fayette, and turn left at the church – Saint Sever, that is. It’s a boarding-house: yellow shutters, you can’t miss it.’ She shifted her position: the stone seats weren’t ideal for lengthy occupation. ‘I have a telephone number I can give you…’ She shut her eyes: ‘Damn…’

  ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘It’ll have to be early, this evening. Six, six-thirty?’

  ‘Make it six. What is it, a later appointment?’

  ‘With a hairdresser, to talk about perfume. In her working hours she’s too busy. Then I have to get back before curfew—’

  ‘What time’s that, in this town?’

  ‘Ten. Used to be nine, but—’

  ‘Six to six-thirty would be fine. You and Romeo, I hope… Angel, if you’d like something to eat now – we might find some place not too far …’

  On the whole, she decided, she was glad to have him here. From Buckmaster’s description she’d expected someone tougher and older-looking: but those inner qualities would no doubt reveal themselves, in times of need. His presence would complicate things for her, a little; although she was beginning to wonder whether she hadn’t been somewhat over-confident, mightn’t eventually need him to lean on – again, thinking of him in Buckmaster’s terms… Not that she’d change her mind at this stage, on that issue: S.I.S. had wanted her to play it solo, and she would – touch wood: but her hopes might have been raised too high
by Jacqui, her own view of the prospects there sparking excessive optimism. As well as feeling comfortable about Romeo – contrary to Buckmaster’s advice… In better perspective now, she could see there was still a long way to go with Jacqui and that if she wasn’t very careful, very patient – as well as continuing to be lucky – it might well blow up in her face. Jacqui had worked with ‘La Chatte’, for God’s sake – in one particular capacity – and was now a German officer’s mistress. The Boches had known of her connection with La Chatte, had arrested her as well – La Chatte almost certainly having shopped her. And they must have turned her: or she in turn had informed on La Chatte, got her own back. It was potentially a minefield: on top of which Romeo would be leaving soon – possibly within days, less than a fortnight anyway, since the Lysanders of the Special Duties Squadron only flew in and out of France when there was a moon, and this present one had no more than a fortnight’s life left in it – after which there’d be only César to turn to, if things went wrong.

  She wondered if he was married. By the age of thirty-eight, you’d guess so. On the other hand, that bit of his cover-story might be real.

  He’d had a fairly hair-raising time, getting here. The collapse of the réseau in Marseille to start with, a pattern of events not dissimilar to those which Romeo had described as having occurred here and in Dieppe: César had been sent there to pick up the pieces, as it were, before coming to set up a replacement network here in Rouen. Security of communications in the Marseille area being about as uncertain as they were in Rouen, he’d been told to visit a resident agent in Lyon, code-named ‘Fabien’, who’d give him instructions about making his contacts here, the rendezvous with ‘Angel’ and a telephone link to ‘Romeo’. It was the first time he’d heard of either of them. In fact he’d been dead lucky, as far as the timing had worked out: having arrived in Lyon and booked in at a safe house, Pension d’Alsace – Rosie had recognized the name and tried to interrupt, but he’d ignored her and she’d desisted – he’d called on this ‘Fabien’, an elderly character who dealt in silk. He’d spent no longer with him than he’d had to – five or ten minutes – and then returned to the planque, and later that same evening a young girl had arrived in a state of panic to tell them that Fabien’s premises had been raided and the old man arrested simultaneously at his home. There’d been a cache of Resistance weaponry in his warehouse, apparently. It would be a matter of only an hour or two at most before the pension was honoured with similar attentions – the owner/manager was Fabien’s niece, and she was quite frail, couldn’t be expected to hold out for long against interrogation by Klaus Barbie’s team – and a complication had been that in the pension were three U.S.A.F. aircrew who were to have been collected in a few days’ time by a courier from an escape pipeline channelling escapers over the Pyrenees and out through Spain. (The route by which Rosie herself had got out a year earlier, as it happened.) So, César had taken them under his wing – by train to Montaubon, where he’d had a contact, thence to Perpignan to leave them in the care of a Spanish bar-owner who had a link to the Pyrenean group, code-named ‘Switchback’.

  ‘The delay was in establishing my own identity. I could have been a German – agent provocateur, Gestapo agent or what-have-you. I’ve been taken for a German more than once, as it happens. I look like one, eh?’

  ‘Hardly… Well, I suppose at a pinch …

  ‘And from the years in Holland my French has some slightly different intonations, so I’ve often been told. You must have noticed?’

  ‘There’s a very faint – well, it’s—’

  ‘Didn’t arouse your suspicions?’

  ‘Until you told me about Rotterdam—’

  ‘But that itself could be a ruse. It was what they thought in Montaubon – until I was able to convince them, thank God. They’d have killed me, otherwise.’

  ‘How would a Gestapo agent bring American flyers with him?’

  ‘They might have been taken from some prison camp, for that purpose. Might be a good dodge – eh?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She shrugged. ‘What I was going to say just now, though – the news that Pension d’Alsace in Lyon had become a mousetrap reached Louis – in Paris, my employer – when I was with him.’

  ‘Ah. Did it, now.’ Gazing at her: then a nod… ‘So he’ll have passed it on. Good. Having no access to a radio myself, I asked the Spaniard – as soon as he got to Perpignan—’

  ‘I passed it to London myself, last Friday.’

  ‘Small world, uh?’ The smile faded. ‘Did you tell them about Fabien too?’

  She shook her head. ‘Never heard of him, until now.’

  ‘So we’ll include it in your next transmission. Tomorrow – on your bicycle?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘It’s what I want, Angel.’ A nod; blue eyes resting on her. ‘It’s definitely what I want.’

  * * *

  She was earning her pay today, all right. Romeo, when she rang him from the Brasserie Guillaume and invited him to join her there, flatly refused.

  ‘But I have to see you!’

  ‘My darling, I’d like nothing better, believe me.’

  ‘Well, then—’

  ‘Not there, that’s all. Especially if you’re in that mood… How about Marc’s place, in half an hour?’

  ‘It’s so far…’

  ‘It’s also more private. I can send him out – be on our own. Unless you’re saying you only want to talk—’

  ‘No. No – all right. In one hour, though, there’s something I must do first – new shoes, actually – these are practically worn out already, and—’

  ‘Use your bike, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘I’m going to, but I’ll have to go back and fetch it. Say an hour and a half, in fact. All right?’

  Then César at six, Jacqui at seven. Full day…

  She bought a pair of shoes at a shop in Rue Gros Horloge, using about three-quarters of the money she had left and most of the coupons supplied by both Marilyn and Louis – whom she had yet to contact, incidentally, to warn him about the Bonhommes’ daughter. The articulated wooden soles took a bit of getting used to, but at least the soles of her feet, already bruised and hurting, were protected from the cobbles. She was keeping the old cardboard ones to use as bedroom slippers.

  Get some cash out of César this evening, she thought. Or extract it from the quarter-million earmarked for Jacqui and which César didn’t have to know about. Better to get it from him, though. The shoes sounded like clogs: she’d noticed it before, the loud clack-clacking other women’s made, but when it was your own feet doing it you found yourself trying to tread softly.

  She got to Ursule’s, finally, met no-one on her way up to the room, found the money and radio where she’d hidden them and transferred the former to her sample-case. The bicycle was in a back-lobby off the kitchen: she wheeled it out, and joined the hundreds of other cyclists on the streets of Rouen St Sever. Right, then, into Rue La Fayette: having difficulty in keeping the still smooth wooden soles from slipping on the pedals.

  By the time she reached Rue Bras-de-Fer, either she’d got the hang of it or the wood had roughened. But she’d wear the old ones for long rides like tomorrow’s, she decided, as long as they held together.

  ‘Well, Romeo…’

  In Pigot’s office, he glanced from her to the clock, ‘Only a quarter of an hour late, not bad… Anyway – is it that your boy’s arrived, or that he hasn’t?’

  ‘He’s here.’ Massaging her feet. ‘He wants me to bring you to meet him at the Café Belle Femme at six this evening.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well –’ she looked up, across the rubbish on the desk – ‘reviewing his troops, I suppose. He’s all right, incidentally, I quite like him.’

  ‘Quite like him?’

  ‘All right, I like him. But having only met him this morning…’ She shrugged. ‘You want some money from him, don’t you?’

  ‘Not now, no – not if I�
�m due for the magic carpet. In view of which I’m hardly one of his troops, either. With all respect to him, and best wishes for his success, etcetera—’

  ‘Be easier if you did come.’

  ‘You had the money anyway, didn’t you?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Reminding you that I’m not a complete idiot, that’s all. Just because this fellow snaps his fingers—’

  ‘It’s not like that at all. What harm is there in just saying hello to each other?’

  ‘The same as there might be in meeting you at your brasserie or anywhere else where there’s a crowd. I told you – I might have been left free deliberately – as a stalking horse, you might say. Or – listen – suppose some of the small-fry were turned and let loose. You can just about bet on it, some will have been – turned, anyway. Families as hostages, if necessary. But even without that… Obviously they knew of my existence, I was their pianist, for Christ’s sake – and for all I know one or more of them might have had a sight of me – seen me with Max, for instance, guessed it was me? I wouldn’t have known… Well – I can’t live underground like a rat, life has to go on and I have my job – but I don’t loaf around town, either. Don’t meet pretty girls in brasseries, or newly arrived agents in cafés. Your new friend wouldn’t thank me if they’d kept me under surveillance until I led them to him, would he – on his first day here?’

  It made sense. They would have a damn good idea that sooner or later S.O.E. would put in a new réseau in place of the one that had been rolled up, and they’d have applied all the brainpower they could muster towards setting the scene for a repetition of that clean sweep. She’d known it, obviously – could have written a thesis on it – but in this instance her awareness of the danger had been primarily in the context of Guillaume’s arrest – what he might tell them about the girl on the train when they pointed a red-hot skewer at one eyeball, for instance.

  Romeo was saying, ‘Tell him for me, please. I want to get away – for my own sake, I’ve had enough, I don’t mind admitting it – and meanwhile for his sake I’d be a damn fool to go near him. Got a cigarette on you, Angel?’