by Peter Watson
“What do you think it’s like? There’s a war on. The roads are choked with military hardware; there are roadblocks every so often; every so often the roads have been bombed or shelled and haven’t been repaired, so you have to drive into a field to get round the holes, or take small lanes, where you spend half your time backing up to allow something bigger to go by.”
“So what sort of speed can we hope to achieve, assuming I can get the right sort of armoured vehicle in the first place?”
“Twenty to twenty-five kilometers an hour, at the very most.”
“Somewhere between twelve and fifteen miles an hour. That’s what I thought.”
I turned and inspected the map on the wall behind me.
“Reims is directly on our route, and a hundred miles away. Say seven or eight hours motoring. We can spend our first night there.” I pointed. “Reims to Metz is about the same distance, so that’s our second night. Agreed?”
She nodded.
“Metz to Saarburg is about fifty miles, but we have to cross the border that day, and we’re much nearer the front. That may well be another day’s motoring.
“Today is Tuesday. If we get the right kind of Land Rover and can leave tomorrow, we should be in Saarburg by Friday night. Meaning we can see Ulrich Kolbe on Saturday—”
“You’re in luck, sir,” said Roland, barging back in.
Justine and I turned to face him.
“All available armoured Land Rovers and Jeeps are being shipped east—makes sense when you think about it; that’s where the fighting is. You can take one, carry out whatever you have to do, then drop it off in Metz, at the transport depot. You can get a train back from there.”
I looked at Justine.
“If Roland will babysit Max,” she said, “we can leave whenever you like.”
We both looked at Roland.
“I will, I will, of course I will.” He grinned. “But only on condition that you don’t tell anyone what I spent the war doing.”
—
“G.? IS THAT YOU? THIS IS MATT, in Paris. These phones are…It sounds like a gale on the line. Can you hear me?”
Another whooshing sound swept along the wires.
“I can hear you, just. How’s Paris? Do you want Hilary?”
“In a moment, yes. Paris…Well, I’m learning to drink wine,” I lied.
“Hmm,” she grunted. “I’ll stick to gin, thank you very much.”
“How’s Zola?”
“Behaving himself beautifully. He’s with me now. Here, I’ll put the phone next to him. Say something.”
“Zola!” I cried, feeling foolish. “Zola! It’s me—do you recognise your master’s voice? Say something: bark or growl.”
There was a rapid barking, then G. was back on the line.
“That confused him totally. What a shock—he didn’t know where the noise was coming from. He’s quite upset. I don’t think we’ll do that again.”
“He’s not usually so nervous. You’re not overfeeding him, I hope.”
“I am not! I probably look after him better than you do. I give him a bath every week.”
I grinned into the receiver. “I’ll bet that goes down well.”
G. grunted again. “He likes it well enough, once it’s all over. Now, enough of that. I’ll put you through to Hilary before the gales on the line make it impossible to hear you.”
There was a short pause, during which the whooshes and gales came and went more than once.
Then, “Matt? Matt? Is that you?”
“Yes, Hilary, here I am.”
“Good, I can hear you. How’s Paris?”
“Rainy, a bit battered, but still beautiful.”
“Lucky bugger. How are you getting on?”
I told him about my meetings with Claudine Petit and Monique Brèger, and my upcoming visit to Ulrich Kolbe. “After that I should be able to compile my interim report.”
“Well, that’s something. How about—you know—your own mission?”
“Not good. Not good at all. Looks like she was sent east, to the camps. And that means—”
“I know what it means, Matt. What a bugger—I’m so sorry. But you can grieve later. That sounds harsh, but we mustn’t lose sight of the wider reason you are in France. And I’m sorry to have to press you, but I do need that interim report. Despite the prime minister’s intervention, MI6 haven’t totally gone away—they’re still a headache. They’ve been at this game longer than we have, and they’ve got one or two new MPs in their pockets, making trouble. Do you hear? You’ve got to put Madeleine to one side. I must insist.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll do all I can to act quickly after I’ve been to Saarburg at the weekend.”
“Good. Good. I’ll look out for your report.”
“And how are you, Hilary? How’s Crichton?”
“Crichton’s okay, not so different from Grieves. And MI6 is not our only headache—I’ve got a blinder, had it for a week. But I’ll live.”
We rang off.
I felt pretty glum. It looked as though I’d lost Madeleine. Foolishly, I wondered whether Zola would even know me when I did get home. How long is a dog’s memory?
—
JUSTINE REACHED UP AND, WITH BOTH HANDS, pulled back her mane of rust-red hair and shaped it into a ponytail. The music at the Lune was different tonight—guitars and a double bass, softer, easier on the ears. Suggestive.
She was drinking wine, as usual; I had gone straight to the whisky. And—a first—we had eaten dinner in the club. Chicken was the staple in those days, if you could get it, and chicken it was that night.
We had spent dinner discussing the upcoming trip to Reims and points east. Justine had told me that, as soon as the trip was over, and assuming we got more or less what we wanted, she might stop off for a night in Nancy on the way back, to see Gilles.
“Is Gilles a communist, like you?”
“Yes, of course.”
I nodded. “I read those pamphlets you gave me.”
“And?”
“Those three secretaries in the office—the three French girls. Are any of them communists?”
“Why do you ask? What has it got to do with the pamphlets I gave you?” I tapped the back of her hand, resting on the table. “Don’t be touchy. It’s just that their résumé of the newspapers that they prepare every day never has anything in it about the dispute between the Gaullists and the communists. There must be something in the papers from time to time—yet they never include it.”
“They are told to include only news directly related to military affairs.”
“Oh? On whose orders?”
“Roland’s, I think.”
I nodded. “I’m going to have the briefing changed. We need some understanding of French politics. Not a lot, but some.”
“I’m sure Roland—and the women—will do what you want.”
“And what is the latest on the Gaullist-communist tussle? What’s going to happen?”
“De Gaulle is still giving himself airs and graces, laying down the law, making proposals as if he is already president of France. Didn’t Antoine Picard tell you any of this? If he didn’t, what did he tell you?”
I said nothing.
After a pause she went on. “The party is having a conference in seven days’ time to consider—and vote on—what de Gaulle proposes.”
“Who actually runs the party now?”
“There is a steering committee of five—they will organize the meeting.”
I sipped some whisky. “Who are the five?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know them.”
“Really? I was here in forty-one and forty-two, remember. I met a lot of Resistance people, some of them communists. Try me.”
Sipping her wine, she put the glass back on the table.
“Jules Pilany?”
I shook my head.
“Francine Adelbert?”
“No.”
“Daniel Longchamp?”
“No.”
“François Perrault?”
I swallowed hard but managed to say “No.”
But then, as Justine’s brow puckered into a small frown, I added, “Hold on…Wasn’t there a…Wasn’t there a François Perrault who…Yes, didn’t he win the Nobel Prize…for something…something scientific, before the war?”
She smiled. “Yes, well done. François is a most distinguished party member, who gave up his career for the Resistance. He has a lot of following in the party—”
“And who is the fifth member of the committee?” I didn’t want us to dwell too much on Perrault.
“Oh,” she said, temporarily wrong-footed. “Oh, it’s…it’s…Luc Lippens, who—”
“Ah!” I breathed, “There you are, I know Luc, or I did. Wasn’t he based in Alsace at one time?”
She nodded, smiling still more. “Yes, yes he was. Well done again. You’ve got a good memory.”
“Well, well. Where is this meeting of yours? Maybe I’ll come along and say hello to Luc. If I’m allowed in, of course.”
She swallowed some wine. “Oh, I can get you into the meeting. That’s not a problem, though it might be boring for you. It’s in the Théâtre Stendhal at rue Pierre au Larde.”
It was my turn to nod. Today had been a good day. Two steps forward and none back.
OCTOBER
· 23 ·
SAARBURG PRISON WAS VAST, certainly in comparison with La Santé. Long rows of low, brick-built, single-storey huts with corrugated iron roofs, all surrounded by a high brick wall and, beyond that, a barbed-wire fence patrolled by guards with dogs.
The room where Justine and I were now waiting looked like some kind of classroom. Long wooden tables, long wooden benches, a blackboard at one end, fixed to the wall. A window with a metal mesh on both the outside and the inside. The same smell of chalk in the air that we had in the École Lavoisier.
Justine stood up and rubbed the backs of her thighs. “I need to stretch my legs. Three more days in that bloody Land Rover and I might never walk again.”
I nodded. “I know how you feel.”
Gilles had not exaggerated. The roads in northeastern France could scarcely bear the traffic on them. There was military traffic of all kinds, not just Jeeps and Land Rovers but armoured personnel carriers, endless lines of green-grey army trucks, troop transporters, tank carriers, engineering trucks with cranes, supply trucks, ammunition trucks, ambulances, military police Jeeps. There were also some ordinary cars, hundreds of bicycles, a handful of very slow tractors, and a few horse-drawn carts, holding everything up. Many of the roads were narrow, especially when they passed through small towns and villages. All along, at intervals, the roads had been bombed or shelled and not yet fully repaired, and we had to wait in line to carefully negotiate our way around the rubble. In a few places, the road was half closed and the two-way traffic alternated under the supervision of soldiers or the police.
Aircraft flew overhead, keeping low. In addition to everything else, there was the noise.
And then there were the checkpoints, on the outskirts of all the major cities and some of the towns. Mostly, people were just waved through—as we were—but not everyone, and so narrow were the roads that when someone was stopped everyone behind had to stop too.
We had in fact averaged no more than twelve miles an hour on each of the days we had travelled. Paris to Reims was eight hours in the saddle, Reims to Metz much the same, and yesterday, the fifty miles from Metz to Saarburg, across the border, had taken another six and a half hours. In both Reims and Metz, we had eaten in the hotels we had found—we were too exhausted to go out in search of any entertainment. And in Saarburg, so far as we could see, our hotel had the only restaurant in town that was open for business.
“After that journey, I’m rather pleased we are returning by train—”
The door flew open, and there stood Standartenführer Ulrich Kolbe.
Almost six feet tall, barrel-chested, with close-cropped but glistening silver hair, brown eyes—his softest feature. Chin thrust out, badly in need of a shave, grey uniform trousers, loose brown knitted sweater that had seen better days.
I thought: We had all seen better days.
Here was the man who might have interrogated Madeleine. Who might have tortured her, or given the order for her to be harmed. And who might well have issued the order to have her sent east, to her death. What he had done—if he had done it—was not directed at me personally, but it didn’t matter. The effect was the same. If I couldn’t hate Kolbe, who could I hate?
He took one pace forward and stopped, just inside the door. His two armed guards remained outside.
“You are Colonel Hammond, really?” he said in English.
I nodded.
“Do we shake hands?” He smiled.
I didn’t say anything. Why was he smiling? What did he have to smile about?
“It was nothing personal, Colonel. It was the war.”
I wasn’t getting into that. This was my show, our show. He was the prisoner.
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Justine Coudehard,” I said, giving her a rank she didn’t have but which might just help intimidate him. “Do you want to do this in French or English? My German’s no good.”
“My French is better than my English,” he replied, nodding at Justine. “What is it you want?”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you. Cigarette?”
As he sat down, Justine closed the door.
We sat around the end of one long table, he and I on the benches, Justine on what seemed to be the teacher’s chair.
I waited a few moments, so he could enjoy his cigarette. It had begun to rain outside—autumn was here.
“Where are you from, Standartenführer? Where did you grow up?”
“Weimar. Do you know Germany? Does that mean anything to you?”
“Goethe, Schiller, Herder. I go that far.”
He nodded. “That’s something.”
“Have your family been told you have been captured?”
“I don’t know. The war is moving so fast.”
“What family do you have? A wife—?”
“And two boys, eight and six.”
“Still in Weimar?”
“No, Berlin now.”
“Address?”
“Fifteen Schliemannplatz.”
I made a careful note, implying I would help get word to them if he played ball.
“How long were you in Paris, at Avenue Foch?”
He didn’t reply.
“We have information that you were chief interrogator there. Is that true?”
He didn’t move. Then he nodded briefly.
“When exactly did you first start impersonating one of our agents, sending back messages to us?”
“That’s operational detail. The rules of war say I don’t have to answer. Why should I tell you? Why should I tell you anything?”
“Cigarettes,” I replied, smiling.
He just kept looking at me.
“All right then.” I tapped my fingers on the table. “Later in this interview, we may move on to war crimes. If we bring charges and you are found guilty, you could hang. If, however, you are cooperative, helpful…Well, it could make a difference to what we recommend for you. It could make a difference between life and death.”
“So you think Germany will lose this war?”
“The British are about to take Aachen. Calais has finally fallen, with five thousand German prisoners captured. In Germany itself sixteen-year-olds have just been called up. Goebbels made a speech on the radio the other day saying that—and I quote—‘every German house is now a fortress.’ Three thousand bombers hit Berlin two nights ago—more than ever before—and the Luftwaffe has disappeared. It’s just a matter of time, Standartenführer—months, not years. You are an officer, an educated man. You must know that what I say is true.”
“I know we have some secret weapons that could make all the difference.”
“Is that what
you’ve been told? Do you believe what you are saying, or are we playing a game?”
He was coming to the end of his cigarette. I let the packet lie on the table between us.
“Let’s forget about when you penetrated our network, at least for now. I am interested in the fate of our agents in F Section; all of them, but especially the women. You can help me there. You are not putting the future of the Reich at risk by telling us what you know. And I can get word to your family, via the Red Cross, that you are alive and well, without mentioning”—deliberately I paused—“Monique Brèger.”
His head jerked back and he glared at me.
Justine was looking at me too. This was a name she didn’t know. What was I playing at?
Kolbe scratched his chin. He had gone days without a shave and his stubble was clearly irritating him.
I broke the silence. “Let me ask you a general question.”
I hunched forward over the table and spoke quietly.
“When you captured one of our people and brought them back to Avenue Foch, how long did you keep them there?”
He took his time answering. But then, “Two or three days usually. Some up to a week.”
“Did you torture them?”
He eyed me levelly. “We roughed them up, yes. That’s how I’d put it. We knew that their circuits would have been alerted when they were captured and disappeared from circulation, so unless we got information quickly, we would be too late. Also, we knew that people who are going to crack do so sooner rather than later. Avenue Foch was a kind of forward station, a first line of attack, so to speak. If they didn’t crack straightaway, we didn’t keep at them; we sent them east where the interrogators had more time, more space, and more…equipment. Paris wasn’t the place for that.”
I nodded.
Justine was taking notes now.
“When you say you ‘sent them east,’ what exactly did that entail? What did that mean?”
“You must understand that all your agents—your British agents, I mean—were operating in plain clothes, as spies. They had a different status from, say, the French who worked for and with them. The Frenchies were Resistance people and, in some cases that we thought were suitable, we tried to ‘turn’ them, persuade them to work for us. But for the British agents, being sent east meant one of two things. Those who were interrogated and revealed nothing were sent to Ravensbruck. That’s a prison camp north of Berlin where, as I understand it, they would be interrogated more intensely and then executed by firing squad, whether they revealed anything or not. Usually, they were kept in the camp for a week or two before the end came. Anyway, not long.”
