by Simon Mawer
‘I heard Ned talk about heavy water. What is it? It sounds ridiculous. Heavy water and light air. Some scientific fantasy.’
He pulls the curtain back and makes sure not a crack of light escapes. ‘It’s a form of water that can be used to encourage fission. It was Kowarski’s pet project. He and von Halban took our entire supply with them when they escaped from Bordeaux, one hundred and eighty-six litres of the stuff, all from Norway. The world’s total supply, in fact. We smuggled it into France during the spring of 1940 but we barely had time to start any experiments before we had to get it out.’
‘In case the Germans got hold of it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘The whole thing was started in Germany, wasn’t it? Ned talked about Hahn.’
He sits back down at the table. ‘Hahn and Strassmann started it, yes – when they did their first work on fission. At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. But Irène and Pavel Savitch did the same work here, at the Radium Institute.’
‘But if the Germans started it, they could equally well finish it, couldn’t they?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. They’ve got the men – Hahn, Diebner, Weizsäcker, Heisenberg, above all Heisenberg. They have a group called the Uranverein, the Uranium Club. Gentner let it slip in a conversation when he was here. Fred and I assumed …’
‘What did you assume?’
‘That they were trying to generate power from the process. Gentner mentioned a Uranmaschine, a uranium machine, a kind of nuclear generator that would be able to sustain a controlled chain reaction, giving unlimited energy. It’s quite a realistic possibility. Easier than a bomb. That’s what the heavy water is for, as a moderator—’
‘But they could be making a bomb?’
‘Possibly. They’ve got the resources. Czechoslovakia is a good source of uranium, and Norway for heavy water. The difficulty as I see it is getting enough of the right uranium isotope. It’s very rare.’ He opens his hands helplessly, as though things he has been holding safe have just been scattered all over the floor. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, Marian.’
‘But you are.’ She casts around for something further to say, anger bubbling up inside her, a lava of hot fury. ‘It’s Pandora’s Box, isn’t it? You scientists open it up to see what’s inside and all the ills of the world fly out. And once they’re out, no one can put them back.’
Clément laughs at her indignation, but it is a laugh without much humour. ‘I suppose you’re right, more or less.’
‘Ned said it would wipe out an entire city. In an instant.’
Clément nods. It’s the matter-of-fact gesture that’s so frightening. ‘My estimate is that the whole of the centre of a city like Paris would be totally destroyed by just one such bomb; as far out as, say, Montmartre in the north and Montparnasse in the south. I mean exactly that – no building left standing. Beyond that it would be the same destruction as an ordinary bombing raid for, what? a further three or four kilometres. Within the inner area everyone would be killed. Outside that a few might survive, only to die days later from the effects of radiation. The question is’ – he looks across the table at her – ‘how can you expect me to get involved with something like that?’
For a moment his guard is down. Bewilderment makes a child of him. Suddenly she feels older than he, as old as her parents, older than her parents, wiser and sadder than anyone could possibly be. ‘A few weeks ago they raided Hamburg,’ she tells him. ‘Maybe you heard about it. They used ordinary bombs, of course, and they laid waste seven square miles of the city, killing fifty-eight thousand people in the process. Not a few hundred, not even a few thousand. Fifty-eight thousand. What particular moral equation do you fit those figures into, Clément? You’re good with equations – your wave mechanics, or whatever you call it. How do these figures fit in? The problem with this war, Clément, is that there are no innocents. You can’t stand aside and say it wasn’t your fault. It’s everyone’s fault. At this very moment people are being killed on your behalf. You can’t say you didn’t want it to happen because it is happening. Now. And it seems likely a single one of your atomic bombs dropped on Berlin would stop the war in an instant.’
‘Would that make it right?’
‘When it was all over we’d be free to have an anguished discussion about the morality of it all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.’
She climbs into her cold bed and waits motionless for her body to bring warmth to the sheets. She thinks of Marian Sutro, a person she has been and, perhaps, will be again; a girl possessed of childlike enthusiasms and the capacity for devotion. Where is Marian now? She thinks of Clément beside the lake at Annecy, and Benoît in London, and Scotland, and here in France. She remembers being in the cinema, with Benoît’s arm around her shoulders and that Pathé newsreel – Hamburg Hammered – on the screen. Bombers roaring through the night, with a city of glowing embers in the blackness below them. In the Filter Room she plotted raids going out, the RDF operator whispering in her ear: ‘New track: Victor Oboe, fife-one, eighter-three, ten plus at five, showing IFF,’ while she reached across the table and placed counters on the table where East Anglia bulged into the North Sea, single aircraft growing to dozens, dozens to hundreds, squadrons climbing into a darkening sky and merging into a great stream in their advance towards the Dutch coast, five thousand men setting off into the night. The four o’clock watch used to count them out and the midnight watch would try to count them in as they crept back over the North Sea, battered, shot up, empty of bombs, empty of fuel, empty, finally, of the fear that must have possessed them throughout the hours of the raid. How many dead? And on the ground, how many?
Fifty-five thousand in Hamburg alone.
Or was it fifty-eight? You could lose three thousand people in a mere slip of the memory.
The bear laughs at her out of her dreams. It means the end of the war; maybe the end of the world.
VIII
The café is a short walk from the river in the rue Saint-André des Arts. As she opens the door a bell tinkles somewhere in the back and the man at the bar looks up from wiping glasses. The place is undistinguished inside – brown wooden panelling; some photographs on the wall, scenes of a Paris from before the First War; a poster for Byrrh, a chalk board with the word Menu but nothing else written on it. She sits at a corner table and orders a coffee. When the barman brings it over she says, ‘I’d like to speak to la patronne. Is she around?’
He looks her over thoughtfully. ‘She may be.’
‘Tell her that my aunt in Marseilles sent me.’
The man sniffs, as though there is something implausible about aunts of any kind but especially aunts from Marseilles. Behind the bar he talks on the phone for a few moments. ‘You’ll have to wait,’ he says as he puts the receiver down.
She nurses her coffee. The barman reads a newspaper, the latest edition of La Gerbe, running the headline Le Maréchal Parle à la Nation. A few people pass by outside; one or two peer in. She stares out into the street and wonders. She wonders about Yvette and she wonders about Clément. In the Southwest there was little time to wonder, but here in the city it is different: you have to wait, and waiting brings thoughts and concerns and anxiety. In peacetime the countryside was still and the city a hive of activity; in wartime the circumstances are reversed.
‘How long?’
‘How long what?’
‘Will I have to wait?’
The barman shrugs. ‘It all depends.’
La patronne arrives half an hour later. She is a middle-aged woman with the relics of beauty in her face and a faint air of concern in her expression, as though she has mislaid something but isn’t quite sure what. ‘My Aunt Régine in Marseilles sent me,’ Alice explains.
The woman purses her lips. ‘I haven’t heard from her for ages. How’s her rheumatism?’
‘It only plays up when there’s the sirocco. Otherwise she’s fine.’
She nods. ‘You’d better come round the ba
ck.’
Behind the bar is a small room that is part storeroom, part kitchen. There’s the ubiquitous picture of Marshal Pétain on the wall and another of Maurice Chevalier. A wall calendar advertises Peugeot bicycles. The woman pulls out a chair and then stands watching as Alice sits, as though this is some kind of interrogation. This isn’t how it was meant to go. There was meant to be something more, a sense of welcome, some hint of camaraderie, of shared fear and shared determination. Alice glances back to the doorway. She can see the barman’s back blocking any exit.
‘I’m Alice,’ she says.
‘Claire.’
‘They told me to come here.’
The woman watches her. It’s impossible to work out what she is thinking. Finally she says, ‘I heard about you. A week ago. When did you get here?’
A small surge of relief, but relief tempered with caution: they can pull you in, lead you on, drag you so deep in that you’ll never get out. ‘Two days ago. I’ve been in the South-west. WORDSMITH. Do you know WORDSMITH?’
The woman shrugs. ‘What do you want with us?’
‘I need a pick-up. Can you arrange that?’
‘Why from here? If you’re in the South-west, Spain’s only over the border.’
‘It’s for people here in Paris.’
‘How many passengers?’
‘Two.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Are you one of them?’
‘No, I’m not.’
The woman chews her lip thoughtfully, then turns to the calendar on the wall. There are a few pencil scribbles – bills to be paid, deliveries made, things like that. But what is most obvious is that it’s one of those calendars that has the phases of the moon marked above the date: a black spot for new moon, crescents waxing and waning, a white circle for the full moon. Claire points to the next full. ‘Even if we can do it, you’ll have to wait at least ten days. Can your passengers manage that?’
‘I think so.’
‘I’ve got a flat you could use, but who knows how safe it is these days?’
‘They’re all right as they are.’
The bell sounds in the bar and some customers come in. Claire pushes the door closed and lowers her voice. ‘It’s dangerous here in the city, you know that? Not like the countryside. Here everything’s in chaos. This place may be under surveillance.’
‘I didn’t notice anyone—’
The woman laughs. ‘You wouldn’t. They let you get on with things and then pull you in when they wish. A lot of the time the only reason you are operating is because they allow it. Do you know about PROSPER?’
‘I’ve heard something.’
‘Well, it’s been blown. Dozens of arrests. Hundreds. And others. INVENTOR, CINÉASTE.’ She looks round the tiny room as though in surprise to find the walls still standing. ‘At the moment we’re lucky.’
‘One of my passengers is from CINÉASTE.’
The woman looks incredulous. ‘That’s impossible. Everyone was taken.’
‘Her field name’s Marcelle.’
‘The pianist? Surely she was picked up with the rest of them.’
Alice shakes her head. ‘I’ve found her. She’s been in hiding. Apparently she was late for the rendezvous when the others were arrested …’
‘Do you know her? I mean, would you recognise her?’
‘Of course. We trained together.’
‘Where?’
‘Scotland.’ But the woman seems to want more. ‘Meoble Lodge on Loch Morar,’ she adds, and Claire digests this extra piece of information, turning it over in her mind like a dealer turning over a piece of porcelain in his hands. Is it fake or is it genuine? Is it whole or is it damaged?
‘How did you find her?’
‘Marcelle? She’s pretty scared. At least she seems scared—’
‘I mean, how did you know where she was?’
‘Oh, I see.’ Alice smiles at her misunderstanding but searches in vain for a corresponding smile on the woman’s face. ‘The address came from London. They contacted WORDSMITH, because they knew that I would be able to recognise her. She told me the last thing she gave them was her new address – it’s a new place she had just found, so she hadn’t told anyone else. Then she went off the air. I’ve got her wireless now.’
‘It’s my understanding that she was arrested with the others.’
‘It seems not.’
‘Can you trust her?’
‘Of course I can trust her. She’s more than a colleague, she’s a friend.’
Claire is silent for a while, as though considering the value of friendship. ‘What about the other passenger?’
‘Nothing to do with CINÉASTE. Nothing to do with any circuit. London want him out.’
‘Safe?’
‘I can vouch for him, but I can’t tell you who he is.’
Claire shrugs. ‘Some shitty politico, I expect.’ Then an idea occurs to her. ‘If you’ve got Marcelle’s wireless you can ask for a message from London. Do that. Have a message broadcast over the BBC.’
‘What message? Why?’
The barman puts his head round the door. ‘I’ve got to go in ten minutes,’ he says. ‘You’ll have to take over.’
‘Paul is going in ten minutes,’ the woman tells Alice. ‘That way I’ll know that I can trust you.’ For the first time she smiles.
Once more she takes the métro across the city, and this time leaves a message with the fat man called Boger at the café, to meet Yvette at the entrance to the cemetery. It’s safer like that, out in the open away from eavesdroppers. They walk at random through the city of the dead, past tombs and memorials and epitaphs. Some of them bear sad bunches of decaying flowers. One or two are names one recognises, a poet here, an artist there. Others have lists of letters after their names, as though you ought to recognise them even if you don’t.
Alice says, ‘I’ve been speaking to people.’
There’s a lurch of anxiety in Yvette’s expression. ‘What people?’
‘People who work for the Organisation.’
‘Who are they?’
‘It doesn’t matter. But they say that every member of CINÉASTE was picked up. Including you.’
‘Well, it’s not true, is it? I’m here.’ There’s a snap in her voice, a sharp edge of temper. ‘What are you saying? Are you accusing me of something?’ Yvette’s voice rises up the register. Is it anger or panic? The two emotions feed off each other in a grim symbiosis. ‘I’m on my own, Marian. You can see that. I’m alone. Christ, don’t you believe me?’
‘Calm down. I’m just saying people are suspicious.’
‘But who are these people? Who the hell knows anything about me? What have you told them?’
For a moment the whole conversation teeters on the edge of chaos. They seem about to have a shouting match, an inchoate row of recrimination and accusation there among the memorials and the mausoleums. ‘It’s all right Yvette,’ Alice says soothingly. ‘I believe you. But you know what it’s like. You know how afraid everyone is. Particularly now, particularly with what happened to PROSPER.’
Yvette calms down. PROSPER and the fate of PROSPER bring with them a sudden tide of fear, and fear conquers anger. ‘You know what Emile told me? Before they were all arrested, you know what he told me?’
‘Emile is a bloody know-all.’
‘But you know what he told me? He told me that there was a traitor in PROSPER.’
‘If he was clever enough to know that, why wasn’t he clever enough to avoid being caught?’
Yvette gives a little, apologetic laugh. ‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘Emile and I …’ She tries a smile but it doesn’t really work. ‘We were sleeping together.’
‘Sleeping together?’
Yvette giggles. A hint of her old self. ‘Does that sound dreadful?’
Alice smiles. ‘He wouldn’t be my choice.’
‘But he was a comfort. It�
�s a lonely job being a pianist …’
They reach the tomb of Balzac. There’s the writer’s head staring imperiously over the city he had once dissected. A single mourner stands in front of it, a long-haired man in a crumpled black suit who stares at the memorial with all the fixation of the mildly deranged. When the man has moved on out of earshot Alice says, ‘Anyway it’s all organised. The pick-up, I mean. But we’ll have to wait. You understand that, don’t you? Until the next moon.’ It’s like talking to a patient, explaining the prognosis, repeating her words to make sure they’ve been understood. ‘Do you understand? We’ll have to wait for the next moon period. Meanwhile continue to do what you’ve been doing up to now – lie low and keep out of harm’s way. Have you got money?’
Yvette lights a cigarette, eyeing Honoré de Balzac, mort à Paris le 18 août 1850 through a pall of smoke. Her fingers – delicate, slender, expert with a knife – are stained yellow. ‘I have to buy on the black market. I don’t trust my ration cards.’
‘I’ll give you some cash. All you’ve got to do is wait for me to contact you again.’
Somewhere in the cemetery a bell begins to toll. People are walking towards the crematorium at the top of the slope. ‘There’s a funeral,’ Yvette says. She tosses her cigarette end away. ‘Let’s go. The last thing I want to see is a funeral.’
IX
She pulls the suitcase out and puts it on the bed. Clément is standing at the door, watching. She opens the case and stands back for him to see.
‘There.’
The dull gleam of black metal, of glass dials and Bakelite knobs. He peers at the thing as though it were a new piece of research apparatus. ‘You know how it all works?’
She shrugs. ‘I hope so. I did the basic course, not the full WT School. My Morse is useless.’ She closes the lid and looks up at him. ‘So what do I say to them?’
‘I’ve spoken with Fred. I explained about the letter from Chadwick.’
