Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

Never back down, the first rule in the game. If Cathcart wanted Stepney’s deniable Section D to coordinate this operation, he wouldn’t accept a brush-off. “Spit it out, Cathcart. What aren’t you saying?”

  Cathcart scanned the empty corridor. “Stepney, all I can say is that the ship captain set sail equipped with the S-Phone.”

  Stepney contained his surprise. All this subterfuge over a piece of equipment? Was that it?

  The device, in early development, was designed to fulfill three functions at the same time: radiotelephone, homing beacon and parachute drop spot indicator. He had requested this prototype, which they were calling an S-Phone and which could transmit ultrashort waves between a plane cockpit and a mobile set on the ground, to equip his group on their drops and extractions. Several were in field test use and the device was still in experimental stages. Flawed or not, quiet as it was it would have been ten times more secure than the ground fires built by underground agents to light the landing zone for agent drops and extractions. His request had yet to be processed. Meanwhile he had lost how many good men in the last few weeks?

  It more than rankled that Cathcart already had one.

  A Wren scurried around them with a clipboard in her hand. The men waited until she left the corridor.

  “The S-Phone would have been of great use for our drop pilots,” Stepney said, fighting to keep his voice neutral.

  “They’re equally useful ship to shore,” Cathcart said. “We are starting to employ the S-phones on submarines and fast patrol boats during clandestine landing and removal operations.”

  He hated being so low on the SIS totem pole they hadn’t thought to inform him.

  “I’m late for a meeting,” said Cathcart.

  Dismissed.

  Cathcart wouldn’t get away so scot-free. Stepney had to get something in return. “My new radio operator gets a ride over on your ship. I need trusted radio signalmen for ground communication.”

  “You’re asking a lot, Stepney.”

  A lot?

  Cathcart was gone.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Canal de l’Ourcq, Paris | 5:00 p.m. Paris Time

  Kate didn’t know how much she could trust this butcher Ramou, a burly man with a bloodstained apron and expressionless black eyes. The two card players were lifting the wounded man up a rickety ladder to a hay loft in the stable’s rear. The familiar aromas of sweet hay and dried blood filled her nose.

  “This man needs a doctor,” she said. “Dédé said—”

  “No names.”

  She figured Dédé was an alias, but nodded. “Fine, but he wanted me to bring this man here. He’s important.”

  “What do you mean?” said the butcher in stilted English.

  Was he playing dumb or safe? But the truth was she didn’t know, either. Instead of answering she said, “Why would he send us here if he didn’t think you’d help?”

  The butcher lifted a basket down from a nail on the wall and handed it to her. It contained a bottle of wine, a baguette, a jar of confiture and a half-open packet of pills.

  “This isn’t enough. He’s badly hurt—fevered—”

  The butcher cut her off. “Best I can do.”

  “He needs medical attention.”

  “Zut! Who is he?”

  “He’s important, that’s all I know.”

  He could have internal injuries. She swallowed hard. Wondered if the man would last.

  “Bon, you take care of him.”

  “Me?” she said. “That’s not my job.”

  The sewer man had told her to make contact with the underground, that they’d be able to help her. So far nothing had panned out.

  “It’s your job now,” said the butcher. “Nothing to do with me.”

  “Nothing to do with you?” Her frustration boiled into anger. “Look, call the bar, he’ll verify.”

  “We don’t have a telephone.”

  “So how do messages get through?”

  “Messages? I’m a butcher, not a doctor.”

  Hooves clopped on the cobbles, signaling an arrival in the stable. The two men descended the ladder, conferred with the butcher in what sounded like convoluted French. Kate couldn’t understand a word.

  “What’s the matter? What were they saying, some code?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Butcher’s slang, louchébem. You’re on your own,” he said. “I’ve got to work.”

  She eyed the injured Brit and weighed her options. Zero. The butcher had to be more connected than he let on. Stepney’s words came back to her: Change plans at a moment’s notice. Improvise. “Look, find a doctor. Meanwhile I’ll do what I can.”

  The wounded man lay among the bales of hay in the loft, his sandy blond hair matted with sweat, eyes closed. Now that the burlap sacks were off him, she took note of his appearance: a leather jacket and ripped leather headgear, a single boot. His right leg was splinted to a stick of wood. Midway between his knee and thigh was a dirty dressing over the pants. A knapsack was still slung over one shoulder despite all he’d been through.

  A downed pilot.

  She set down the basket and knelt beside him. His forehead burned. But his well-fed figure filled out the flight suit.

  His eyes blinked open and he grabbed her shoulder. His teeth chattered. “I’m so c-c-cold.”

  She found a horse blanket, covered him with it. “Thirsty?” He shook his head. “Try a little.” She took the red wine, put the bottle to his lips. He sipped, a trickle running down the side of his mouth. She dabbed the wine away with the end of the blanket. He gave off a fevered smell of dried sweat. “Now some bread.”

  He shook his head. Clutched his leg.

  Kate couldn’t fight off the memory of Lisbeth’s fevered little body and her febrile convulsion. Lanced by pain, Kate struggled to focus, to help this man before it was too late.

  “Were you shot down?”

  “Ambushed . . . others gone . . . only winged me,” he gasped, then let out an awful moan.

  She pulled the blanket off to see blood gushing from the dressing. There was a bullet wound in addition to the fracture, she finally realized. She should have checked the wound first, damn it. Idiot.

  She had to focus. Put everything else out of her mind.

  She remembered the hired hand who’d gotten gored by a bull on the ranch. Pa had said it bled bright like that when a vein got punctured. Or was it an artery? She couldn’t remember.

  Good God, she prayed, help me.

  Her pa’s voice rang in her head. You’re not a ranch girl for nothing, Kate. You’ve patched up plenty of injured cattle in the ranch yard. Get to work.

  She unsnapped his flight suit. Took off the blood-soaked dressing, ripped his pant leg down to mid-thigh to expose a small dark red hole now spurting blood. Tried not to gasp. The man was losing so much blood.

  She pressed the blanket over his wound. Was she doing the right thing? She had to sustain pressure. With her other hand, she took the torn pant leg in her teeth and ripped off a strip. She attempted to lift his heavy thigh to slide the strip under it. “Try to help me and turn your leg.”

  Groans answered her.

  She had to stop the blood flow above the wound. Hating to do it, she rocked his thigh back and forth while he cried out in pain. Finally, sweat beading her brow, she managed to tie the strip tourniquet-style at his groin above the bullet hole. That done, she applied pressure to the wound.

  The blood flow had lessened.

  Taking a deep breath, she rolled him on his side. Didn’t know if this was right or wrong medically. She saw a large jagged exit wound, the shredded flesh spotted with dirt, leaves and tiny bone fragments. His leg had swollen due to the fracture and no doubt the exit wound was infected. Christ, he’d be lucky to keep his leg.

  She summoned her courage, dipped her fingers in wi
ne and swabbed the edges of the dirty exit wound. Whiskey would have been better. She’d seen her pa remove buckshot spatter from his own leg with his pinkie and a bottle of whiskey. Holding her breath, she picked out the dirt and leaves.

  The pilot shrieked.

  “Sorry, sorry, this will only hurt a minute.” She had no idea if that was true. She had to find the bullet.

  He was screaming now, flailing his arms.

  “Shhh. Please try to stay still.”

  Sweat trickled down her neck. Her fingers came back with clotted blood and yellowish bits of tissue stuck in her cuticles. No bullet. Bile rose in her throat. Her nerves vibrated.

  The man’s screams had died, giving way to shallow breathing. Anxious, she wiped her hands off on the straw and blanket. She took a pill from the basket, opened his mouth and let it dissolve on this tongue. She hoped it was an analgesic or a fever reducer. At this point, she figured, it was crueler not to try it than to misuse it.

  Kate dabbed his forehead with a strip wetted in wine since there was no water. Banked prickly hay around him to keep in his body heat. He closed his eyes.

  An eternity passed in the stifling barn loft. She listened to the man’s fevered moans, dabbed his fevered brow. Medical help, if that’s what the butcher had gone for, wouldn’t take this long, would it? Hiding out with the British pilot in this suffocating heat, she felt like a sitting duck. The butcher could have turned them into the Germans, claimed a reward.

  Stupid to get herself in this mess. She needed a plan. Tried to think things through. RADA. But here she was with a seriously wounded man; she couldn’t leave him.

  She felt his forehead again. The pilot’s temperature crept higher. The tight tourniquet had stanched the blood, but his condition had gone from bad to worse.

  The time stretched. Anxious, she dabbed his forehead again. Then looked down into the barn. No one.

  In this hot, silent barn, all her fear and anger came crashing down on her. She’d failed her mission. This pilot needed a doctor and, despite her efforts, seemed to be dying on her watch. She’d tried, like she had tried to save Lisbeth, and was failing again. Not only couldn’t she save this man, she didn’t see how she could save herself. Any chance of escaping to England looked remote. Tired, so tired, she battled to stay awake, but her eyes were heavy with fatigue.

  Kate couldn’t fall asleep now. This man’s life depended on her. She had to figure something out. An image of black-haired, musky-smelling Philippe, if that even was his name, flickered in her mind, and for a moment she indulged in a daydream of curling up in his arms and shutting her eyes.

  “Get ready.” The butcher had appeared at the top of the ladder. The suggestion of a summer evening hovered outside the barn window. She remembered how late it got dark. She must have dozed off.

  He thrust a blue apron and a long-sleeved blouse and skirt like the one she had seen the dairy cart volunteer wearing at her. “Put this on.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “We have to move him.”

  “You’re kidding, right? He needs medical help. This man’s in no shape to be moved. Infection has set in and his leg’s fractured.”

  “You’re a doctor now?” The butcher glanced at the passed-out pilot. “Look, our doctor’s been arrested. And the veterinarian, well, he’s a collabo. It’s too dangerous for him to stay here. We could all be killed.” He nodded to the garments he’d handed her. “Put that on. We need to get moving. We grease the canal watchman’s palms, but for who knows how long.”

  “Wait—where are you moving him?”

  “To a boat, that’s all you need to know. In the meantime, whatever you’re doing, keep it up.”

  Kate had no choice.

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Near Canal Saint-Martin, Paris | 7:00 p.m. Paris Time

  After more than two hours wasted writing a detailed report for the Führer, finding Kostoff at the Kommandantur to sign off on it, then finally relaying it to Jäger, Gunter met Niels in the Mercedes. Gunter hoped he would catch the Englishwoman at the address the informer Verdou had given him—privately he had come to think of her as the Englishwoman, for no reason besides his childhood memory of the English ladies with their Pears soap.

  If Verdou wanted his wallet back, he would have to deliver. Gunter wanted to sew this up, appease the Führer and be on the evening plane back to Munich.

  Niels downshifted, pulled the brake and kept the engine purring. Next to Gunter sat a lab tech named Karl dressed in drab green. It was Karl’s name Volke had written down for Gunter—he had turned out to be Volke’s cousin. Gunter needed an extra pair of hands for this and Volke trusted him.

  “Seems like a dodgy area, sir,” Niels said. “Reminds me of Wedding.”

  The neighborhood did indeed look like the Berlin slum. Gunter peered out the car window at a string of dilapidated bars, an old one-legged beggar on crutches, medal on his lapel, holding a tin cup. He reminded Gunter of the maimed war veterans he still saw back home.

  Mid-block, one door down from a shuttered music shop, was a nineteenth-century sign lettered claverie. Beside it, numbered 224, were light blue double doors framed by art nouveau plaster curlicues. The shop window displayed no old-fashioned whalebone contraptions but lacy peach satin lingerie.

  “Sure about this address, sir? It’s a corset shop.”

  “Yes. We’re in Paris, Niels. Home of the Moulin Rouge, the Folies Bergère.”

  Gunter eyed a lace garter belt—would his wife like it? Two hundred francs. Not on a RSD investigator’s salary. A salary dependent on catching this sniper.

  Not just his salary—his post and family’s safety hung in the balance.

  Gunter outlined his surveillance plan. “You know how to use a gun, don’t you, Karl?”

  Karl frowned. “Of course. I work in the rifle testing range. But I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “Your job’s to wait in the courtyard out of sight and write down the descriptions of people coming into the building. Verstehen Sie?”

  “Jawohl,” Karl said. “How detailed should this be?”

  Karl’s question irritated Gunter. He needed him to play his part. “Note their weight, height, hair color, age.”

  Karl’s sallow face looked unconvinced. “Is this operation sanctioned? I mean, who are we reporting to?”

  Had he asked this kid’s opinion? Sweat prickled his neck.

  “I report to the Führer.”

  Sunday, June 23, 1940

  Canal de l’Ourcq, Paris | 7:30 p.m. Paris Time

  Kate donned the heavy cotton clothing over Gilberte’s dress, then tied the apron on top. She hated the heavy starched skirt. Why couldn’t they wear summer uniforms? The sweat on her neck stuck to the stiff collar. Jittery, she shooed away the bluebottle fly buzzing near the confiture in the basket. Hunger pangs hit her. She dipped the bread knife inside and licked the jam off. Raspberry. Sweet, fragrant and delicious.

  Where had Ramou gone? After the hurry up it was all wait.

  A breeze drifted from the stable’s open door up into the stifling hay loft. She flapped the skirts up to feel the cool air on her legs. The pilot’s eyes blinked open.

  “What kind of nurse are you?”

  “The worst kind.”

  He shook his head. Winced. He’d slept a good two hours.

  “Feeling better?” She smiled encouragement.

  Instead of smiling back he glared at her. Good, maybe he was rallying. Now he could tell her what mission he’d been on and maybe how they could get out.

  “Who are you?”

  “Swan. I’m just a . . . This is . . . this is . . .” He reached out, his arm flailing at the hay. “So thirsty . . .”

  He wanted the wine. She lifted his head and put the bottle to his lips. His labored breathing came in gasps. “Antoine,” he managed. “Meeting him Gran
d Palais.”

  She put the wine bottle again to his lips. “Antoine who?”

  “We studied together . . . Birmingham. My best man . . . must give him . . .” He trailed off.

  She needed more from him or there was nothing for her to go on. “Give Antoine what?”

  “Damned cauliflower . . . I hate vegetables.”

  He was babbling.

  “What about Antoine? Your best man from Birmingham?”

  Exhausted by the effort of speaking, the man’s jaw slackened. “Where . . . am I?”

  Oh no, it felt like she was losing him to delirium.

  “C’mon. The wine will make you lucid.” A gulp. Then another. No answering smile. “Buck up, pilot.”

  Again, he shook his head. Winced.

  “You’re not an RAF pilot?”

  “B-b-bloody hell, I’m . . . an engineer.”

  The more he spoke the more agitated he became. And the more flushed.

  “An engineer? What are you doing here?”

  She heard a low rattle from his chest. “Listen, can’t you?” His flushed face tightened with exertion. Sweat beaded his upper lip.

  “I’m listening.”

  “. . . our project . . .” He closed his eyes.

  “Before you said something about invasion plans. What do you mean by that?”

  Horses neighed below. The gate scraped.

  “Engineer! Can you hear me?” She dabbed his forehead.

  “Bloody . . . Kriegsmarine . . .” His jaw slackened.

  He was talking in circles. He looked too near death for a haul across Paris. He struggled to sit up and she pressed his shoulders down. A new red stain spread from his wound.

  “Don’t move, please,” she said. “You’re bleeding.”

  His drawn face appeared more haggard than before. Weakened from the exertion, he reached out again, his hand flapping in the hay. “Must . . . get this to Grand Palais . . . Antoine. There’s a conference. At the Grand Palais.”

  Then his eyes rolled up in his head.

  As clear as day she saw Lisbeth’s little eyes roll up until only white remained. No, no, not again . . .