Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

  Are you a Democrat or Republican? Would you join a workers’ union? Have you ever been, or are you, a member of the Communist Party? Have you supported the German American Bund?

  So this was what an interrogation was like. Were they testing her to see if she could hold up under pressure?

  She shifted on the chair, keeping her answers simple and truthful. Faltered once when asked about how she met Dafydd in Paris. She found her courage and replied, “Those memories are private, gentlemen, because that’s all I have. Memories.”

  They grilled her about her childhood, the ranches her father had worked at, her student time in Paris, did she get along better with her mother-in-law now?

  “How do you know all this?” Kate asked, nervous.

  Had Stepney dug into her background since their brief meeting at the shooting range?

  “We know all about you, Mrs. Rees. The only thing we don’t know is whether you can shoot as well under more difficult conditions.”

  “I’ve hunted in blizzards and in the rain,” she said. “I would have qualified for the Olympic sharpshooting team but there’s no female division. Yet.”

  “Have you ever killed a person, Kate?”

  So they wanted her to assassinate someone. Her throat went dry.

  “Shot wolves when times got tough on the ranch. They brought in a twenty-five-dollar bounty. But mostly just deer, elk, and rabbits to feed us all winter long.”

  “Why don’t you give us a demonstration?”

  The men ushered her across the lawn to a shooting gallery in an empty stable. She hit the target bull’s-eye at three hundred yards, ten out of ten attempts, at which point she put the rifle down.

  “I’m tired of bruising my shoulder,” she said. “This recoil needs adjustment before I continue.”

  One of the men, who sported a row of medals on his chest, nodded. “I hated that on the Lee-Enfield myself. Not bad, Mrs. Rees.”

  Coming from a Brit, and a high-ranking military man at that, she figured that was praise.

  He handed her a rifle, another Lee-Enfield No. 4, Mk. I (T), mounted with a telescopic sight and cheek pads. “Try this. It’s a prototype—not in full production yet.”

  She gripped it. About ten pounds, she figured. She looked through the telescopic sight, ran her hand along the wood forestock, pulled back the bolt. “Interesting.”

  “It’s efficient. Little muzzle flash, credible accuracy. We’ve made modifications for faster disassembly. Care to try for the ‘mad minute’?”

  She’d faced that challenge in the ’36 championship.

  “You mean fifteen targets in sixty seconds?”

  “Let’s make it thirty.” He set six charger clips on a ledge. Looked at his watch. “Ready? Go.”

  Kate grabbed a charger, lined it up vertically into the slot, pushed down hard with her right thumb to load the clip into the magazine, tossed the clip, and repeated this with a second charger to fully load the rifle. Aimed and fired. The rifle shot cracked and a soft wuft traveled through the air. She ejected the cartridge and reloaded, firing a round of ten, reloading each time. Each shot hit the target bull’s-eye. She repeated a second round of ten and then a third.

  “Time,” he said.

  She slid the safety on, turned and handed the rifle back to the bemedaled military man. “Not bad.”

  He smiled. “This one might have your name on it.”

  June 21, 1940

  Somewhere in the Scottish Countryside | Five Days Later

  Kate yawned as she trudged up the staircase to the trainees’ rooms. Her brain ached from memorizing details, her legs from practicing parachute jumps. The air mechanic’s jumpsuit, the smallest the trainer could find, hung from her shoulders. Completing her ensemble was an oversized gray cardigan and army boots.

  After an RAF plane ride at dawn to God knew where, they’d driven an hour through a countryside of gorse and steep crags. Somewhere in the Highlands, she figured. Startled blackbirds erupted from the roadside brush as the camouflaged military truck shot past. Crystalline air scented with wild heather and coarse grasses rushed in the window.

  They’d reached an old hunting lodge in a deep ravine dotted with bushes and stunted trees. The sunlight on the jagged peaks was familiar, reminding her of the wild way the crags of the Klamath Mountains caught the light.

  For the last five days, the intensive training had lasted from dawn to late at night.

  There were three other trainees stationed out here with her, under the constant monitoring of the instructors. Failure to follow any rule, they were told, meant dismissal. Talking among the trainees was forbidden. Mealtimes at the long refectory table were taken in silence. The only other woman, Margo, read magazines; Lewis, a small, rail-thin man, played solitaire; and George, ruddy-cheeked and stocky, did the Times crosswords.

  In her room, Kate brushed her teeth at the porcelain sink, then padded across the bedroom’s wood floor. Her roommate, Margo, lay asleep.

  It was cold as hell, so she grabbed another blanket from the old chest. With heating, this place would be bearable. She fell asleep, exhausted, for how long she didn’t know. And then she was back in the white-hot dust, flames licking her legs . . . Lisbeth. Her nostrils filled with the smell of burning hair. The doctor was grabbing her arms.

  She woke up shaking, perspiring in damp sheets.

  A candle flickered, casting dim light on the high arching ceiling. She heard sobbing from Margo’s corner. Should she see what was the matter? Rules were no talking. This could be a test.

  She’d never get back to sleep with her roommate sobbing.

  To hell with rules. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders against the cold and knelt by Margo’s bed.

  “You all right?” Dumb question, but she’d never spoken to the woman. She had no idea where she came from or why she was here.

  “Do I sound like it?” A British accent tinged by something European. It was the first time Kate had heard her speak. “Course I’m not.”

  Kate poured water into a glass from the pitcher on the bedside table. “Drink this.”

  In the licks of candlelight Margo’s tear-stained face emerged from under the pillow. Her chestnut hair was matted to her wet cheeks. She took the glass and drank.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My fiancé died at Dunkirk,” Margo said.

  “That’s terrible. I’m sorry.” Kate pulled the blanket tighter in the chill room.

  “Sweet man.” Margo pushed back her hair, wiped her face with the sheet. “It’s awful. I didn’t love him.”

  “That happens. You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

  “Hard not to. I love someone else. The wrong someone.” Margo was looking for Kate’s reaction.

  Kate shrugged. “Don’t we all at one time or another?”

  “Sorry if I woke you,” Margo said.

  Kate’s bare feet were like ice. “If you did, it saved me from the rest of my nightmare.”

  Margo nodded. “Every night you toss and turn, cry out.”

  “My turn to apologize.”

  “Did you lose someone, too?”

  Kate’s hands clenched. “An accident,” she said, the words sticking in her throat. “A petrol supply truck, it crashed into our car . . . My baby and husband, they . . .”

  Margo’s arms were around her. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine your pain. If you don’t want to talk about it . . .”

  But she did. The story gushed out of her, the first time she’d said it out loud to anyone.

  “No wonder you have bad dreams every night.” It was Margo’s turn to pour a glass of water from the pitcher for Kate. “So do I.”

  An orange band of dawn glowed over the dark treetops.

  “Do you dream about your fiancé, or . . . ?” Kate hesitated.

  “It’s compl
icated.”

  Was her lover a married man?

  “He’s my mission . . .” Margo’s words dried up.

  No one knew their mission, as far as Kate knew. She didn’t know hers. Was Margo referring to some kind of personal mission?

  “What do you mean?”

  Knocking sounded on the door. “Rise and shine. Breakfast in ten.”

  Margo put her finger to her lips.

  Saturday, June 22, 1940

  Over the Forest of Fontainebleau, France | 1:00 a.m.

  Unstable June weather, just like at home—cloud cover and fog. Martins hated fog jumps. He prayed for luck and hoped he wouldn’t land in a henhouse, dangling from a tree or in a river. With the radio set’s extra weight, he’d sink like a stone before he could swim.

  He couldn’t see a bloody thing.

  The woman huddling in the back of the converted Whitley bomber wore a jumpsuit and parachute pack. They’d bundled her onto the plane last minute before takeoff. He had enough to worry about on his own, wasn’t here to hold the woman’s hand. But he wondered. Was she his contact? A spy?

  Martins avoided her gaze.

  The flight had veered into trouble two hundred and fifty kilometers beyond the Channel, where low-lying fog over the drop at Rambouillet had made for zero visibility despite the full moon. Now they were behind schedule. The RAF pilot kept on to Fontainebleau, destination drop two. There were no landmarks and no signal lights to guide the pilot to the drop zone, just the radioed coordinates and guesswork.

  “I’m only going in once!” shouted the pilot. “Out you go. Now.”

  Martins straddled the exit hole in the floor of the fuselage, buffeted by the wind as the plane shuddered under the weight of the petrol. He looked down at the gray blanket of clouds below him. The woman glanced up at him, then away. He kissed the Saint Christopher medal around his neck, scissored his legs and let himself drop.

  He plummeted for long moments in the slipstream until his chute billowed and led him on a crazy dance through the fog below. Blots of darkness, then a green space. Perfect. The marshy ground rushed up, meeting his feet, and he rolled several times. Gathering his chute, he peered into the night, trying to distinguish objects in the degrees of darkness, listening to the flutter of night birds.

  He’d landed where the field joined the forest. To his right, a darkened French village; to the left, his contact was waiting—he hoped.

  He dug a hole in the mud with a hand shovel, shucked off his jumpsuit, and buried it and the chute. A rapid succession of crow caws erupted from the forest. The signal. Thank God.

  Buttoning his brown French-label jacket and smoothing down his trousers, he headed toward the signal. Damn mud made a sucking sound each time he took a step. The radio set in his rucksack weighed heavy.

  The orange glow of a cigarette appeared between the trees, and he made his way toward it.

  “You’re late.”

  Lucky he’d made it at all with the fog, he almost said. Instead he said, “Guts for garters.” He paused, waiting for the response to his password phrase. A moment passed. The dark figure threw the cigarette and Martins saw the arc of its orange tip disappear.

  Uneasy, Martins reached for the Webley pistol in his pocket. A bright light blinded him. Shouts in German. It was too late.

  Blood filmed Martins’s eyes; all he knew was a haze of pain—searing, shooting flames in his arms, his chest. The voice, seductive and soft; the German saying, “Thirsty, Englander?” The cool wet cloth touched his blistered lips and then went away. “Come, come, drink all you want. It was your friend who told us where to find you.”

  Mercier, the French contact Stepney had vouched for, had turned Martins over.

  “. . . not my friend. Don’t know anyone here.”

  “Your friend, your contact. Semantics. But we don’t care about him. What’s your mission, who are your other contacts?”

  His aching arms were strung to a blackened wood beam. His feet dangled just above the dirt barn floor.

  Martins gathered his saliva and spit toward the German.

  A languid sigh. “Aaah, but you’re thirsty, I know. It’s so easy, just tell me. So much simpler if you do now. Take him down again.”

  The rope loosened and he landed in a heap on the dirt. Strong arms gripped his shoulders and his head was plunged again in the trough of tepid water already tinged with his blood. He’d had no chance to take a breath; he sputtered, water filling his mouth, his nose, struggling against the hands holding him down. Involuntarily, he inhaled a mouthful of water, choked. This was it: he was drowning in a horse trough, the Gestapo’s torture of choice.

  And then he was pulled up. Water gushing from his nose, his stomach heaved and he threw up more water and spittle.

  “Who’s your contact?”

  “No . . . no one knows.”

  “But your radio—that, you know. You can help us, just cooperate.”

  Martins shook in terror. All agents were trained in techniques to withstand the pain and last forty-eight hours under torture. Could he? “I don’t know anything about a radio.”

  His skull cracked against the wood trough. Pain shot through him. Pinpricks of light danced over the blood-smeared walls of the barn. He brought his vision back into focus on the black uniform, the SS insignia on the collar, those kindly eyes looking at him.

  “When’s your meeting?” When Martins didn’t answer, the man gestured to a makeshift farm table. “This isn’t what you want, is it?” Surgical instruments gleaming in the dim light of the barn. “I’m a veterinarian by training. But the anatomies and nerve impulse conductivity in animals and humans differ very little.” He picked up a scalpel gently and stroked it. “We descend from primates. Shall we confirm that?”

  Part II

  Sunday, June 23, 1940 | 8:45 a.m.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Montmartre, Paris | 8:45 a.m.

  Kate forced herself to remember the plan. To not let herself wonder what was going on outside. To ignore the Nazis scrambling Hitler down to the car.

  Breathe, think, don’t give in to panic, Stepney had said.

  RADA.

  The next thing she had to do: partially disassemble the rifle, enough to fit it in the bag. She’d practiced this a hundred times.

  Focus.

  She removed the magazine, flipped up the latch, lifted the rear sight and slipped out the bolt, removed the rear handguard and put the sight back down. Using the small flat-head screwdriver from the chain around her neck, she unscrewed the foresight protector and removed the upper band, continuing methodically, forcing her hands not to shake, going as quickly as she could without rushing, until finally removing the buttstock. How much time had this just cost her? She cleared the thought from her mind—there was no alternative.

  Perspiring, she collected the shells into her canvas bag, then fit all the rifle’s pieces in. She checked the room once more—she’d left no trace of herself that she could see. Then she was padding barefoot down the stairway.

  On the third floor, a little face peered at her from behind the open door of the apartment. A face like a cherub. Kate noticed the little girl’s pink socks on the wood floor. So sweet, so innocent. For a moment she felt an overwhelming desire to scoop her up and hold her close.

  She turned her face away, hurried on.

  At the rear door of the building, she slipped on the shoes she’d stashed. She stuck the canvas bag into the straw market bag she’d prepared and put the still-fresh bouquet of daisies, bought yesterday, on top. Ready as she’d ever be, she stepped out from behind the dustbins and onto a road that was really no more than a steep set of stairs lined with teardrop lampposts leading down the hill from Sacré-Cœur. Not far below, where rue Maurice Utrillo’s stairs met flat rue Muller, she noticed the same melon seller she’d seen before, now stacking melons in his barrow.
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  Behind her at the top of the stairs came a flurry of horns, shouts, and the thump of boots. An uncontrollable shaking spread from her neck to her shoulders. Refusing to let herself sneak a glance behind her, she gripped the warm metal railing, head down, making her feet move, willing her shaking to stop. She forced herself to remember her instructions.

  Don’t stop, don’t pay attention to any disturbance.

  “Achtung!”

  Kate’s silk blouse stuck to her back and her breath came in pants as she kept walking. Only a few more stairs until she reached rue Muller. She felt warm air rush past her ears, raise the hair on her neck as footsteps thudded on the stairs behind her. Any moment she expected her arm would be seized.

  Then German soldiers were rushing up from behind and past her.

  “Halt!”

  Just ahead on rue Muller the melon seller looked up, terror in his eyes.

  A moment later he was surrounded. Soldiers were sticking bayonets into his barrow and tossing out melons, which split open on the cobblestones. One soldier held his arms while another roughly searched his person.

  Kate averted her gaze and kept to the wall. Bile rose from her stomach. She tried to block out the man’s yells, which raked like nails across her skin. She wanted to reassemble the rifle and pick the brutes off one by one. A car bearing small swastika flags mounted on either side of the hood squealed to a stop on rue Muller. The doors opened and the old man was pulled inside.

  Too late.

  Keep moving.

  She rounded the corner, walking faster now, head down. Every bit of her itched to run. She forced herself to maintain an even pace, moving calmly among the few other people on the street: an old man walking his dog, a girl skipping rope, a woman beating dust from a carpet on her balcony. Don’t stand out.

  Three minutes later she reached the small storefront of Loulet among the clustered shops of Marché Saint Pierre, the fabric market. Since this was Sunday, the shops were closed, the place deserted apart from street cleaners sweeping the gutters. The sun beat down; leaves on the linden trees shimmered below Sacré-Cœur. Not a whisper of wind.