The Game of Treachery

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘I said it was urgent.’

  ‘Nothing has happened to Freddie, I hope?’ Chance would be a fine thing.

  ‘No no. Not as far as I know. I have been visited by the secret police.’

  ‘You have been visited by the Gestapo?’

  ‘Not the Gestapo!’ Madeleine’s voice became almost a wail. ‘The SD.’

  ‘Shit! What did they want?’

  ‘They wanted to talk about you. They think you’re connected with the Resistance in France.’

  ‘Good Lord! How absurd can you get?’

  ‘They say you have just been in France. In the south. Where the guerillas are.’

  ‘Of course I have just been in the south of France. I went to see your parents, as nobody else seems interested in them.’

  ‘Oh. And how are they?’

  ‘I have no idea. I was arrested before I could get to them.’

  ‘You have been arrested by the Gestapo?’

  ‘Not the Gestapo. The Wehrmacht. Your old friend Franz Hoeppner. He was most apologetic, but he would not let me visit Paulliac. So he sent me back here.’

  ‘Oh. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Go back to Sweden, as soon as I can get a passage. There seems to be some kind of fuck-up at the moment. Look, I have a lot to do. I’ll see if I can get round to you tomorrow. Take care.’ She hung up, and found she was sweating. But at least that conversation should keep whoever was listening happy.

  *

  She had lunch, and then went out. It was broad daylight, but she felt safer in the light; it was easier to tell if she was being tailed, and although she had no doubt she was — if only to prevent her from simply going to a railway station and seeing how far she could get — as it was a Sunday afternoon the streets were busy. Even so she doubled back on her tracks several times while steadily leaving the centre of the city to delve into the side streets until she reached the address she wanted.

  It was a cheap lodging house. The front door was open, and the hall stank of stale tobacco and unwashed human bodies. The things I do for England, she thought. But she was doing this for Liane more than England.

  As she closed the door, a man came out of one of the downstairs rooms and peered at her, taken aback by her expensive clothes as well as her extravagant good looks. ‘You have business?’

  ‘With Joachim.’

  The man looked her up and down again. ‘You could do better, Fräulein. Third floor.’

  He watched her climb the stairs, studying her silk stockings. She ignored him, went up the three flights, arriving only just out of breath. There was only one door, and when she tried the handle it was unlocked. She opened it, and there was startled movement from the gloom. Joachim sat up, while his partner slipped down under the bedclothes. ‘What the fuck …?’ Joachim complained.

  ‘Get her out of here,’ Joanna said.

  Now the partner also sat up. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘His wife.’

  ‘You bastard,’ the young man snapped at Joachim.

  ‘She’s not …’

  ‘In this country,’ Joanna remarked, ‘homosexuals get sent to concentration camps. Are you going to leave, or am I going to call a policeman?’ The man scrambled out of bed, began putting on his pants. Joanna gathered up the rest of his clothes and threw them into the corridor. ‘You can finish dressing out there.’ The man staggered out of the room, and she closed and locked the door. Then she advanced to the bed. ‘You are a shit!’

  ‘I … I …’

  ‘Was I dreaming, or didn’t you once make advances to me?’

  ‘It’s the job. Not you. You’re beautiful. But …’

  ‘Are you telling me he’s one of us?’

  ‘Well, no, but …’

  ‘He knows who you are?’

  ‘No, no. You see …’ He got his nerves under control. ‘What are you doing here? It is against all the rules, except in the most extreme emergency. You are risking both of our lives.’

  Joanna sat on the bed beside him. ‘This is an extreme emergency. I want you to earn your pay. I have to get a message to England not later than tomorrow night.’

  ‘That is not possible.’

  ‘You had better make it possible or it’s the high jump for you. Now listen very carefully. The message will read: St Valery blown. Abort. Liane blown. Recover. Group penetrated. Warn. Now repeat that.’

  ‘Can you not write it down?’

  ‘That would compromise both you and me. Repeat.’ Joachim repeated the message. ‘Good boy. I’m sorry I interrupted your fun.’ She gave the lump under the sheet a squeeze. ‘Now, I am leaving. You jerk off to clear your head; then go find your courier and send him on his way. Come to see me as soon as it’s gone to confirm. If that message doesn’t get through, I am going to return here and personally castrate you … with a blunt knife.’

  She closed the door behind herself. Joachim sat still for several moments, then got out of bed and dressed himself. His hands were trembling and it took him a little while to fasten his buttons. Then he checked his kit, took out the capsule, regarded it for a few moments. He hated carrying it, in case he made a mistake. But if he was going out on a job …

  He inserted it into his mouth, between the inside lip and his teeth, pulled on his coat, and there was a rap on the door. ‘Fritz!’ he asked. ‘Is that you?’ He opened the door, and received a thrust in the chest that sent him staggering backwards across the room. Two men came in, closing the door behind them. ‘What do you want?’ he gasped.

  ‘Tell us about the lady who was just here.’

  ‘The lady? Oh, Lili. She is just a friend.’ He knew he was finished. She was finished. They were all finished. Simply because she had broken the rules.

  ‘A friend. A rich and well-known American woman is a friend of a two-bit crook like you, Joachim? You will have to do better than that. You will come down to headquarters and tell us all about her.’ Joachim drew a deep breath.

  ‘He should be searched,’ said the other man.

  ‘If he had a weapon he would have used it by now.’

  ‘His mouth, you fool. His mouth.’

  ‘Open your mouth,’ said the first man.

  Joachim sucked the capsule between his teeth, and bit.

  *

  ‘Would you believe it,’ Weber said. ‘The fools began to question him before they searched him.’

  ‘Who was he, anyway?’ Heydrich asked.

  ‘Oh, some petty crook who also pimps, so far as we have been able to ascertain. Name of Joachim Schmitt. But he had a cyanide capsule. This is not normal equipment for a petty crook. It is standard equipment for enemy agents. Any agents. We issue them to our own.’

  ‘You are saying that this “petty crook” was actually a British agent?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘Living and operating in Berlin, under our very noses, and no one knew of it?’

  ‘These people are very difficult to find, unless their cover is blown. This fellow’s cover was blown simply because Jonsson paid him a visit, and my men were tailing Jonsson.’

  ‘And instead of merely keeping an eye on this fellow they went barging in. The quality of the people we are forced to employ appalls me.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Weber argued, ‘we now surely have sufficient evidence to arrest Jonsson.’

  ‘What evidence? That she paid a visit to a thief and a pimp. Maybe she felt like a fuck.’

  ‘That she paid a visit to a suspected enemy agent.’

  ‘On the basis of one cyanide capsule? It won’t work, Oskar. Do you know that there are already rumours circulating in the States about atrocities being carried out in our prison camps? God knows who is spreading them.’

  ‘But they are basically true.’

  ‘That may be, but we do not want the world to know about it yet. Certainly not America.’

  ‘Why are you so afraid of America? You know we are going to have to fight her eventually.’


  ‘Eventually. When the Russian campaign is completed, which will be by the end of this year. Then we will have all Europe west of the Urals.’

  ‘Save for Great Britain.’

  ‘Great Britain is not a part of Europe. It is an offshore island which has a habit of interfering in European affairs. Once Russia is gone, Great Britain will become an irrelevance. But until then, we keep the Americans happy, and we will not do that by arresting one of their better-known citizens without sufficient evidence to prove our case. In any event, she is better off where she is. Let us suppose you are right and this Joachim is a British agent, and let us suppose that Jonsson is also a British agent. Why did she go to see him immediately on being returned from the south of France? It has to be because of Ulstein. She knows what Ulstein has discovered, and has to warn her people in England so that they can take the appropriate steps. As she does not know that Schmitt is dead, she will assume that whatever message she told him to transmit has gone. You found his transmitter?’

  ‘No, because there wasn’t one. He must use a courier.’

  ‘Well, that is someone else for you to find. The important thing is, as I say, that Jonsson will assume that her message has been delivered, and do nothing more about it. When she is allowed to leave Berlin, it will be too late. It is all in your lap, Oskar. I look forward to hearing that you have captured Liane de Gruchy. In fact, do you know, I look forward to meeting the famous lady. Tell your men not to tarnish her beauty until I can get there.’

  Six - The Decision

  The clicking of heels on the pavement penetrated the closed window of the bedroom. Liane was instantly awake and sitting up. ‘Soldiers!’

  Achille rolled over, lazily. ‘They are up early.’ He put his arms round her waist to draw her down to him. She had shared his bed now for nearly a month, and he still could not keep his hands off her.

  ‘They are on our street. They are coming here.’

  ‘Why should they do that?’

  ‘Because we are next on their list. Yesterday they raided two houses in the Rue Saint-Alor, and the day before in the Rue Vincennes.’

  ‘I know of this. They are looking for someone.’

  ‘They are looking for me.’

  Now Achille also sat up. ‘Nobody knows you are here.’

  ‘Several people know I am in Paris.’ She got out of bed.

  ‘None of them would betray you.’

  ‘I know. It is routine.’ The boots had stopped. Liane moved to the window, stood against the shutter to look down. ‘Fuck it!’ There were two soldiers in the alley behind the bar. She was surprised at her agitation. She had always known this had to happen, had always known the way to handle it. She drew a deep breath to get her nerves under control.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Achille was now also nervous.

  ‘Nothing. We are in bed together. Asleep.’ She listened to the banging on the street door. ‘Now we are awake. Go down, and do whatever they wish.’

  ‘Suppose they search the place. The radio! The gun?’ He looked at her shoulder bag, hanging on the hook behind the door.

  Liane also looked at the bag; her capsule was in there. ‘They will not search the place, if we handle it correctly. Go down or they will break the door.’ The banging was getting louder. Achille pulled on his pants and went to the door. Liane got back into bed, pulled the sheet to her throat. The voices were coming closer, and she could hear feet on the stairs. Achille was protesting. Then the bedroom door was thrown open.

  Liane sat up with an exclamation of alarm, the sheet still held to her throat. Achille was thrust into the room, followed by an officer and four soldiers. The officer gazed at Liane, then looked down at a piece of paper in his hand. Liane felt a sudden rush of relief. The only portrait of her they possessed, the one they had used on the wanted posters, was a blow-up of a photograph they had taken from her flat last year. That photo had itself been a year old, and was of an immaculately dressed woman, shoulder-length yellow hair perfectly groomed, classical features flawlessly delineated by her make-up … There was obviously no way he could relate his print of the picture, which was in any event dog-eared and beginning to crack, with this somewhat unkempt woman with short black hair and not a trace of either rouge or lipstick ‘Your name?’

  ‘Sandrine Bouchard.’ Liane spoke in a low voice, the one thing she could not adequately disguise. But there was no possibility that any of these men could ever have heard her speak.

  ‘You are this man’s wife?’

  ‘I am at this moment in this man’s bed. He allows me to do this while I try to find a place of my own.’

  ‘You are a whore.’

  ‘I am trying to stay alive.’

  The lieutenant snorted, and turned to the door, but one of his men remarked, ‘As she is a whore, Herr Lieutenant, should we not have a closer look?’

  ‘A look,’ the officer said.

  The soldier came to the bed. Liane made herself keep calm, slowly lay down again. There was nothing she could do about what was about to happen. She just had to endure it and wait for them to go away again; she had experienced this before, in the village north of Paris in the first week of the war. But then Joanna had been with her, sharing the burden.

  The soldier grasped the sheet and jerked it away. Liane lay absolutely still. ‘There’s a sight,’ commented another of the men. Even the lieutenant came closer to look at the magnificent body lying before them.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘You have had your look. Now let us be about our business.’

  The first soldier was still staring at Liane’s pubes. ‘Herr Lieutenant.’

  ‘Have you never seen a cunt before?’

  ‘The hair is pale, sir.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The hair on her head is black. Are we not looking for a blonde woman?’ Liane attempted to sit up, and was thrust flat again.

  ‘By God,’ the lieutenant said. ‘You are a genius, Gruber. Up, Fräulein. You will come with us.’ Liane looked from face to face, and realized she was panting. She was finished, all because of that careless slip. Hands grasped her arms to pull her from the bed, and the bedroom exploded.

  The five Germans had ignored Achille, standing by the door, in their desire to look at Liane’s body. He had reached into her shoulder bag, drawn the Luger, and emptied the nine-shot magazine. He was no marksman, but in the confined space he could not miss. Even Liane could not suppress a little shriek as bodies fell about her; the man who had revealed her secret actually fell across the bed, spewing blood. ‘Achille!’ she gasped.

  ‘I could not let them take you.’ But he too was aghast as he looked from the pistol in his hand to the five men. He dropped the gun on to the floor. ‘Now they will hang us together.’

  ‘Get this thing off me,’ Liane commanded. Achille held one of the man’s arms — he was certainly dead — and dragged him off he bed. Liane wriggled out from beneath the blood-soaked sheet, used it to wipe the blood from her stomach and breasts and shoulder, and reached her feet, listening to a groan. The lieutenant, although he too was bleeding, was moving, trying to reach his holster. Liane stooped beside him, drew the pistol, then looked at Achille. ‘There must be no more shooting. Use a bayonet.’ Achille swallowed, knelt beside one of the soldiers, and drew the bayonet from the sheath on his belt. Then he hesitated. ‘Do it,’ Liane said. ‘We must hurry.’ Achille drew a deep breath, and drove the bayonet into the lieutenant’s chest. More blood gushed, and his body sagged. Liane checked the other bodies. ‘And this one.’

  Achille again obeyed. ‘You are a terror,’ he muttered.

  ‘That is what the Germans think, and that is what they will continue to think.’

  She took the spare magazine from the lieutenant’s cartridge pouch, dropped it and the pistol into her shoulder bag. Then she got dressed, pulled the radio from its hiding place, and took it apart with expert speed. This also she stowed in her bag. ‘What are you doing?’ Achille asked. ‘We may as well shoot each other.
’

  ‘We must get out of here.’

  ‘People will have heard the shots.’

  ‘At this hour? They will have heard distant sounds. Tell me, what of Jacqueline?’

  ‘She does not come in until ten.’

  ‘I know that. Will she be able to handle this?’

  ‘She will be horrified.’

  ‘That will be ideal.’ She slung her bag. ‘Let’s go. There won’t be anyone on the streets at this hour.’

  ‘Go? But go where? They will tear the city apart to find us.’

  ‘So we must go to the one place they will not look.’

  *

  ‘Are you stark raving mad?’ Constance demanded. Dragged out of bed by a terrified Marguerite, only an hour after saying goodbye to her last client, she was a long way from her normal chic.

  ‘It is my business to preserve both the route and our lives,’ Liane said. ‘If the Germans had taken me to Gestapo headquarters and tortured me, I would have told them everything.’

  ‘So you decided to put all of our lives at risk.’

  ‘Constance, all of your lives have always been at risk. Your survival depends upon my survival. And if you are thinking of any treachery, just remember two things. One is that as you have already entertained several evaders, you are as guilty as anyone. The other is that my friends are still out there, and they will avenge me should anything happen to me.’

  ‘But for you to stay here …’

  ‘We will be no trouble. Nothing will have changed, save for my headquarters.’

  ‘Next thing you will want to set up a radio.’

  Liane patted her bag. ‘I have it here.’

  ‘Oh, my God! And when they trace the calls …’

  ‘They will not trace the calls, because I will not be making any. This is a receiving set, not a transmitter.’

  ‘Just to own a radio carries a prison sentence.’

  ‘So don’t tell anyone we have one.’

  ‘I have always wanted to live in a brothel,’ Achille said.

  ‘Well, I am sure you will be very happy here. But they may expect to be paid.’

  ‘I have no money, save what I took from the till.’