by Vic Robbie
He repeated the question and Brown’s eyes narrowed as he considered whether to share the secret with him. ‘Sorry, can’t tell you because I don’t know. My orders were to get the platinum and you three on board the plane. In our business things are done on a need-to-know only basis. Sorry, old boy.’
He found it difficult to believe him as Brown went back to attempting to unfasten another bag of platinum. Looking around the garage, he noticed two carts stacked with wooden cases in the far corner. ‘What’s the plan?’
Brown stripped off his jacket and pointed to the carts. ‘We’ll pack the platinum into those cases. Tomorrow morning Armand, the shopkeeper, will cover them with crates of fruit and vegetable and they’ll be taken down to the quay just as he does every morning. No one will suspect a thing. When the plane comes in, we and the pilots can load the bullion and be off.’
He clapped his hands. ‘Now, let’s get to work.’
For hours, they toiled in silence removing the platinum from the car, and he was amazed they were all intact after the journey they’d endured. And once they’d removed them they stacked them into the crates and loaded them onto the carts and covered them with empty boxes.
They left the Bentley at the garage and before leaving checked to ensure the lane outside was clear.
Where were the Germans?
65
THEY returned to the hotel to find alena wandering disconsolate and lost in the grounds and at first she didn’t appear to recognise Ben as he ran up to her followed by Brown. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he asked ‘What’s wrong, where’s Freddie?’ Already fearing her answer.
She looked at him with haunted eyes and grief aged her face. Tears started to tumble down her cheeks and her shoulders heaved with her sobbing and she collapsed into him burying her head in his chest.
‘Where’s Freddie?’ he asked again, his voice rising with concern.
‘Gone.’
‘Where?’
‘Gone.’
‘What happened?
‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to make him happy after what he’s been through. It’s all my fault.’
He pulled her head away from him and pushed back her hair. ‘Just tell me what happened.’
‘It was all so quick.’
He kissed her on the forehead and stroked her hair. ‘It’s no one’s fault just tell me.’
‘He’s been taken?’ she said in a quiet voice and her sobbing had now stopped and she appeared almost calm.
‘Taken by whom?’
She glared at him as if he shouldn’t have needed to ask.
‘The Nazis.’ She started crying again. ‘He just disappeared, and I let it happen.’
‘Tell me everything,’ he insisted and over her shoulder Brown scanned the park with a hand on the pistol in his pocket.
‘It would be safer if we went into the hotel,’ said Brown, gesturing for them to follow him.
Back in the room, Ben poured her a stiff brandy and took it over to her and sat beside her on the bed. The opportunity to unburden her guilt caused her words to tumble out like a waterfall. Freddie had been bored, stuck in the room, and had pleaded to go down to the beach. She’d given in and they were walking through one of the tunnels that ran under the railway line leading to the beach when a man bumped into her. She dropped her handbag, spilling its contents, and she bent down to retrieve it. Freddie was shrieking with excitement on seeing the sea and she shouted at him not to run on. Getting back to her feet she looked around and panicked. There was no sign of him and when she turned back the man had gone. At first, she called out expecting Freddie to reappear, but he didn’t and she searched up and down the beach without finding him.
She didn’t report it to the hotel. And, as she didn’t know where Ben had gone, she continued to patrol the park and the grounds of the hotel, hoping he would come running back to her with his big mischievous smile.
‘We should go to the police,’ Ben suggested to Brown.
‘No, it wouldn’t do any good,’ Brown said, polishing his spectacles and holding them up to the light. ‘If the police get involved, it will just make everything so complicated.’
‘We’ve got to do something, Freddie’s life could be at risk,’ he interrupted Brown.
‘The man pursuing you is Ludwig Weber, one of Hitler’s top investigators. If the Portuguese authorities got involved, we’d be stuck here for ages and might not get another opportunity to escape to England. Weber must have the boy and he needs Alena. It may be he has to bring both of them back alive, or at least the boy alive and...’
‘And what?’ Ben demanded.
‘... kill Alena.’ Brown glanced away.
Her face turned white, and Ben exhaled in frustration. ‘Does Weber know about the platinum?’
She flashed him a questioning look.
‘He may not,’ said Brown with the trace of a smile.
‘So his priority is Freddie and Alena?’
Deep in thought, Brown nodded.
‘We can’t just sit here and wait,’ she cried. ‘There must be something we can do to get Freddie back?’
Brown shook his head. ‘There’s nothing, nothing we can do. Nothing at all. For the time being, we are in Weber’s hands.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I appreciate this is painful for you, Alena,’ said Brown. ‘Weber needs you both, you more than anyone must know why.’
Ben glanced at Alena as she sat still wringing her hands and wondered what her secret was.
‘I don’t believe he’ll harm your son yet. You’ll have to stay in this room until he contacts us.’
‘No, I want Freddie back?’ She started to cry again.
Brown shrugged and Ben got up and paced the room, an impotent anger burning inside him.
‘He needs you,’ Brown continued, ‘so he’ll use Freddie as bait guaranteeing he won’t harm Freddie if you go with him.’
She jumped to her feet.
‘Of course I’d go with him to save Freddie.’
‘I know, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the best option for you and certainly not for us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t let you go to him.’
‘You’d stop me?’
‘I don’t think it’ll come to that but yes if I had to.’
She glanced at Ben for support and sat back down on the bed shaking her head. ‘Just whose side are you on?’
‘My country’s.’ Brown looked at his watch. ‘Let me see if I can find out anything. Stay here and on no account answer the telephone.’
‘What if Weber calls?’ Ben asked.
‘I’m sure he won’t just yet.’
Brown left the hotel and walked to the garage where the Bentley and the platinum were stored. Opening the doors, he glanced around checking nothing had been disturbed. He went over to one of the crates and removed an ingot of platinum and breathed on it and polished it with the sleeve of his jacket. Looking at his reflection in the shiny metal, he chuckled and kissed the ingot and tried to put it in his pocket before realising it was too heavy and replaced it.
Before stepping out into the lane, Brown edged the door open and glanced up and down. There didn’t appear to be anyone around. He locked up but didn’t see a figure standing in the shadows of a nearby doorway and the cloud of smoke he exhaled.
While Brown was away, the telephone rang twice and each time he had to struggle with Alena to stop her from snatching the phone off the hook. She couldn’t understand why he was stopping her from speaking to the man who’d kidnapped Freddie, and she shouted at him in anger before dissolving into tears.
‘What did you mean when you mentioned platinum?’ she asked and there was a determination in her glare demanding the truth.
He tried to deflect the question with a shrug.
‘Tell me, Ben, you must tell me.’
They had come so far together and through so much he felt there was no longer any poi
nt in hiding it from her.
‘The Bentley’s carrying platinum from the Banque de France.’
Her eyes opened wide in amazement before bewilderment set in. ‘Where?’
‘It’s strapped to the chassis, it’s worth millions.’
He saw a look of distrust spreading across her face.
‘So, that’s why you were so determined to take the car across the Pyrenees?’
He nodded.
‘The platinum was more important than our safety?’ She turned away from him, shaking her head. ‘You’re no different from the others.’
He stepped forward to try to comfort her, but she waved him away.
‘No, no, can’t you see?’ he implored. ‘I don’t care about the platinum now although it could help us if we’re able to exchange the platinum for Freddie.’
She flashed Ben a cynical half-smile. He didn’t know the real reason why Weber was pursuing them, and she doubted the German would be satisfied with just the bullion.
The phone rang again soon after Brown returned to the room and it was obvious the Germans had been watching them. Brown indicated with a nod he should pick up the receiver.
The voice on the other end was German. ‘Who’s this?’ it asked.
‘Ben Peters,’ he replied watching her imploring eyes.
‘My name’s Ludwig Weber.’ The voice was polite. ‘Please let me speak to Alena.’
He handed over the telephone and she snatched it from him. ‘Where’s Freddie? Tell me he’s all right. Where is he?’
Whatever Weber said seemed to quieten her and she handed the telephone back to him. ‘He wants to speak to you.’
‘Ben, let’s be civilised about this,’ said Weber. ‘There’s a resolution to every problem. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement. We need to meet.’
He put a hand over the mouthpiece and passed on the request to Brown, who shook his head. ‘No way. It’s too dangerous for Alena, we can’t afford to let her go.’
She sprang to her feet and leapt at Ben trying to wrestle the phone from him ‘We must meet him,’ she shouted. ‘Freddie’s all that matters. If we’ve a chance of getting him back, we must take it. You can’t stop me.’
‘Impossible,’ snorted Brown.
‘There’s no way I’ll go to England without Freddie.’ She said in defiance and threatened. ‘I’ll refuse to give you what you want.’
He squared up to Brown. ‘Alena’s not going anywhere without Freddie and neither’s the platinum. Either we get the boy back or everything’s off.’
Brown studied them both, his eyes switching from one to the other. He had to get her and the platinum on the plane. ‘Okay, okay,’ he agreed with a sigh surrendering to the inevitable. ‘But it’s going to be dangerous.’
‘Okay,’ Ben returned to his call with Weber. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘Now you’re being sensible,’ said Weber. ‘We’ll meet tomorrow – a night without Freddie might focus Alena’s thoughts – and I’ll come alone.’
‘No, you must bring Freddie with you so we can see he’s okay,’ Ben insisted.
‘So be it, bis zum morgen.’
‘What did he say to you,’ he asked her as soon as he’d replaced the receiver.
She answered in almost a whisper and the sentence trailed away. ‘If we didn’t agree to his demands, he’d take Freddie away and I’d never see him again...’
66
IT was a relief when brown left them to return to his room and they were alone again. Alena appeared to relax accepting while Freddie was still alive there was hope and in the morning she’d see him again. She went out onto the balcony to smoke and he saw her pacing up and down as if trying to work out some course of action.
‘Pour me a drink,’ she ordered him when she came back in closing the glass doors to the balcony behind her and shutting out the noise of the night traffic. ‘And make it a strong one.’
He insisted on ordering food for her from room service and waited in silence until the waiter brought it in on a trolley, and while he ate she just picked at her food still deep in thought. Once they had cleared away the food, she climbed onto the bed, kicked off her shoes and stretched out. ‘Ben, come here.’
She smiled. ‘Please.’
Lying down beside her, she wriggled up close and he cradled her head with his arm and she turned until her face was almost buried in his chest.
‘I haven’t been completely honest with you, Ben.’ Her voice was muffled and she couldn’t trust herself to make eye contact. ‘I’ve kept things from you and now I want you to know because without your help we’d never have made it this far. You deserve the truth.’
She moved closer to get more comfortable and he stroked her hair wondering what she would say next.
‘I always wanted to become a diplomat. I was very ambitious, perhaps too ambitious. Because I spoke several languages, I was singled out for advancement in the public service in Paris. It was before the war. Even then, there was a lot of uncertainty and with Hitler’s rise to power we were all looking over our shoulders. French Intelligence recruited me without my knowing it. They told me do this or that and if I succeeded it would give me an entrée to the diplomatic service. My looks helped, I guess, and at first I did the round of embassy parties and events and my brief was to listen and observe and report back, just that, no more. Most of what I heard and saw meant little to me, but some of it must have been important because they promoted me.’
She sat up and reached over to the bedside table and extricated a cigarette and lit it. Lying back on the bed with one arm behind her head, she inhaled and expelled the smoke, watching it drift up to the ceiling before continuing.
‘I was sent to England to be trained by British Intelligence.’ She sat up to look at him. ‘No one told me what I was being trained for. At first, they stationed me somewhere around Manchester. There they showed me how to parachute out of a plane coming in at under 400 feet to beat the radar. I hated it even though the jump lasted a little over ten seconds. The pilot would cut the engines to slow down the plane and you were free falling until the static line yanked you up and the parachute opened. I did the main part of my training in the New Forest at Lord Montague’s estate in Beaulieu and you can’t begin to imagine what they taught me there.
‘When I returned to Paris, they gave me a junior title in the diplomatic service, although I did very little in the way of diplomatic work. After a couple of months, they sent me to Berlin, but this time it was more intensive and dangerous. I’d been given a wireless radio transmitter to file regular reports and I had a contact in Berlin who occasionally would give me orders as to whom I should target for information. He appeared to be German although I don’t think he was. I became our liaison to the Nazi party and was encouraged to become almost a supporter, agree with their goals and policies, and make myself popular with the high-ranking officials. It made me very unpopular with my colleagues at the French Embassy as you could imagine although it all helped.’
She glanced at him and then away, starting to blush.
‘It wasn’t difficult. At the time, Berlin was fun. I loved it, lots of parties giving us the opportunity to enjoy ourselves and drink and flirt. I met a lot of top Nazis and German army officers who were very impressive in their uniforms and their manners were always impeccable.
‘Of course we didn’t know then what we know now,’ she added almost as an excuse.
‘My orders were to forge relationships with them to become their friend and to elicit whatever information I could in whichever way was necessary. My handlers expected me to use all my charms to keep them interested, and in their desperation to impress me various Nazis told me much more than they should have. One even proposed marriage, but I managed to fend him off,’ she laughed. ‘Though there was one in particular who became interested in me, and my contact was elated when I told him and ordered me to do whatever he wanted so I had his complete trust.’
She looked at him straight in
the eyes and spat it out. ‘In other words become a whore for my country.
‘I’d just about managed to hang on to my self-respect when one evening I attended a reception for French and German officials. As usual we turned up in our best party dresses and had some drinks and the Germans, in particular, were very smart and attentive and charming. After a while, they invited us to join them at a local restaurant and we saw no harm because some of the senior embassy staff were also going and had promised to escort us back. Somehow, there was a different mood about the evening. All I remember was there was a lot of drink and I didn’t usually drink much because I had to stay in control. We moved onto somewhere else, a private house I think. I wasn’t sure who else had gone although my best friend at the embassy was still with me.’
She stopped, dredging up an inner strength as she tried to remember.
‘I don’t … don’t remember much.’
‘It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me,’ he said.
‘No, I must, you at least deserve my honesty.’
She held her head in her hands and her shoulders shook and the words came in a rush. ‘It was all a blur. One minute the man I was targeting was talking to me, the next I woke up in a strange bed alone. It was obvious someone had been with me.’
‘What happened?’ He put a hand on her arm, not wanting her to answer if it caused her pain.
She pulled away as if she wouldn’t let him stop her from telling him everything. ‘My friend was still in the house and we got a taxi back to our lodgings. It was a Saturday; we had the weekend to recover. My friend was a bit more, um, more experienced in these matters and she didn’t seem to be at all worried about it. I was sick with worry, though. When I told my contact I wanted to leave Berlin, he ordered me to stay and keep seeing the man until Paris decided otherwise.’
She paused to see if he’d understood.
‘So I carried on, still doing what I had to do. When the Nazis were around me, they appeared to treat me with more respect. Then I found out I was pregnant.’
