Return to the Field

by Alexander Fullerton

  ‘Could you be sure, in the dark?’

  ‘Yes. They had torches shining on him. He and whatever was in the van were the focus of their attention. I don’t think it was a road-block of the routine kind – I’d guess he was the target, I just happened to come along.’

  Peucat looked worried. ‘Timo’s not one to scare easily. It would have to be – something quite bad.’

  Like a man facing crucifixion, she thought: that bad. Except one’s own imagination might have played some part. That dreadful impotence: nothing to do but pass on by, avert the eyes…

  A little man on a Paris railway platform, she remembered. Guillaume, they’d called him. She’d been passing within a few paces of him as they’d made the arrest – and she’d known he had plastic explosive in his briefcase. Two minutes earlier, he’d raised his hat to her.

  He’d known what he was in for, all right.

  She asked Peucat, ‘Will you go round in the morning?’

  ‘I think not.’ A frown – as if he hadn’t liked the question. Adding, ‘If he’s home, he’s all right. If not, I’d wait until it’s common knowledge he’s in trouble – then go round, see Adèle.’

  ‘But since you’ve heard about it from me, because in all innocence I happened to be there and saw it—’

  ‘You’re a stranger here, the odds were against your knowing him. Better they shouldn’t have reason to believe you did. Connections with those in such situations should always be avoided, Suzanne – at least, when the connection isn’t already known.’

  She nodded, gazing at him, wondering where he’d got that precept from.

  She changed the subject.

  ‘Did you have a good day, in my absence?’

  ‘A less energetic one than you seem to have had. Thank heaven. But – yes. No one died on me, at least.’

  ‘That’s something.’

  ‘I was going to tell you – there’s a document you have still to acquire – a Carte de Travail. I completed the application for you – next door here, it’s the mayor who issues it. He’s about as energetic as a five-toed sloth, but we should have it in a week or so.’

  ‘I’ll need a second valise to carry all these papers!’

  ‘Reminds me. When you go on your trips – like today, Suzanne – don’t you think you should take it with you, to give an impression of having work to do?’

  ‘Maybe. Yes. Today was different, but – yes, if you’d tell me what I’m supposed to be doing – visiting which patients, and where, for instance. Incidentally, I have to go to Quimper again tomorrow.’

  ‘Again! Good heavens… And I can’t spare the gazo, I’m afraid. Otherwise I’d—’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t have expected… Anyway, that’s not all – Saturday, I’ll be going to the Lannuzels in the afternoon and I won’t be back that night.’

  Gazing at her: waiting for more. Then it clicked: ‘Saturday, of course…’

  * * *

  She set radio-watch in the attic at twelve; nothing came in, and most of that cold hour she spent thinking about Prigent. She was very well aware of her duty to tell London he was blown and under SD or Gestapo surveillance, and that keeping the information to herself meant risking the lives of any other agents or Résistants who might be contacting him either in person or by telephone. His line or lines would quite likely be tapped: her own call to him on Saturday even might have been recorded. Not that they’d get anything from that…

  But – Christ, they would…

  She’d given her name as Zoé – no surname – and Prigent had accepted this without question – and then she’d asked whether she was right in thinking that ‘Micky’ might also be turning up that afternoon. And since then, the same Zoé had rung le Guen on his home telephone – which was just as likely to be tapped – asking for and about the self-same ‘Micky’, who by that time had turned into a girl. To wit, into an alias for Marie-Claude, whereas in the Zoé-Prigent call he’d been male and the dentist’s former schoolmate – also known as François le Guen. The thickest of eavesdroppers would have realized that something stank – and that le Guen would have the answer to it, also to the identity of the Zoé woman. In fact if they’d monitored either one or both of those calls, old François was likely to be put through the wringer very shortly.

  Wasn’t likely to stand up to it too well either, she thought. Not if they really tried.

  But maybe they hadn’t tapped either le Guen’s phone, or Prigent’s as early as Saturday. Might only have got wise to the le Guen-Prigent connection when he’d obeyed Prigent’s summons that afternoon. Otherwise would they have waited until Sunday night/Monday morning to grill him?

  Might have. One knew damn-all of the background. Including how long they might have had suspicions of Prigent.

  Anyway – leave that. If they had either of those calls recorded or in transcript – well, you’d get to hear about it. All you could do for the moment was pray they hadn’t. And get on with it… Concentrating thoughts for the moment on Prigent and the risk to other agents or associates if one left him and SIS un-warned… Well – from his or their point of view it would be unforgiveable: but, one’s own allegiance was to ‘F’ Section, SOE, one’s brief included ‘Mincemeat’ – which in turn depended on le Guen remaining at large and cooperative – and if SIS were alerted to the present situation the odds were that Prigent would make a run for it, and that the SD would assume le Guen had tipped him off. They’d haul him back in, and in pursuit of the truth they’d almost certainly torture him to death.

  In the course of it he’d tell them all he knew about ‘Zoé’. Whose days would then be numbered. And ‘Mincemeat’ wouldn’t get off the ground.

  Sit tight? Not tell Baker Street?

  Or not tell them until the night of ‘Mincemeat’, having on the face of it only then just learnt the truth? A retrospective version of events, if called for at a later stage, might be that she’d had no idea the SD had conscripted ‘Micky’ to work as a double agent. Hadn’t known about Prigent either. She could have thought they’d arrested le Guen’s daughter as a hostage like any other hostage: Marie-Claude for all Rosie knew might have stayed too long at a party and been caught out after curfew, or driven a gazo through a red stop-light. Any minor offence: one mightn’t even have bothered to ask what. Then on ‘Mincemeat’ night old Micky, with his daughter restored to him, would have been moved to spill the beans.

  It was unlikely, she thought – hoping she was still thinking straight, in the ice-cold attic – that le Guen would contradict that version: or even hear of it. He wasn’t ever going to meet anyone from Baker Street, and Prigent’s masters in St James’ would have no incentive to seek him out. In the event, anyway, he and Marie-Claude would be safely under cover – with the Château de Trevarez flattened and at least some of those weekending brass-hats buried under it.

  * * *

  She woke with it still simmering in her brain. Ends justifying the means, was what it came down to. Also the fact that taking chances with other people’s lives was a lot easier when you didn’t know them.

  Didn’t know for certain they existed, even. That was even better.

  Might well be frost out there, she thought. A bit late for one – third day of May, God’s sake – but the light in the window had that steely look, and even with the bedclothes right up she wasn’t all that warm.

  Nose ice-cold.

  Imagining – how one might feel if one heard later – even years later – that some other agent or Résistant had gone to his or her death in consequence of one’s having deliberately withheld the warning about Prigent…

  It was a truth which you carried with you always in the field that you could come to a sudden and very unpleasant end not necessarily through blunders of your own but through the carelessness or malfeasance of others. You could be playing your end strictly by the rules, quite unaware that events which would ultimately send you in chains to Ravensbrück were already shaping up elsewhere.

  Semi-dozing, see
ing this one like a piece of film. Prigent’s surgery door on the Rue de l’Yser. A departing patient: featureless, anonymous. The blonde receptionist sees him out: there’s an exchange of au revoirs, and the door closes. A car’s engine starts – forty or so metres away, up at the cemetery end of the road. It’s a grey Citroën, with two men in it: raincoats, soft hats, leather gloves. The car pulls out smoothly from the kerb and follows, maintaining a certain distance until Prigent’s customer has gone out of sight around the corner. It speeds up then: to round the same corner, then overtake: and for the man gasping as he whirls round, freezing in a moment’s shock then looking frantically for any way to escape, it’s as stunning as an explosion – rocking halt of the grey car that’s bounced on to the pavement ahead of him with its doors flying open and the two men ejecting: their shouts as they grab him…

  ‘In!’

  Flung in like something dead – which he will be, soon. After intervals of pain, humiliation, horror.

  She knew. Had been there, once. Was now out of the bed, snatching up her notebook and a pencil, pausing only for a glance out of the window – seeing there was no frost, despite the killing cold in this end of the house – then leaping back under the blankets so as not to freeze while drafting a signal as succinctly as she could make it. After a few crossings-out it ended up as

  Micky reports Cyprien’s cover blown. Strongly urge no action or warning to him before completion of Mincemeat, since Micky’s contribution is vital and he would be held responsible and arrested if Cyprien evacuated. Suggest only action should be for contacts or communications with Cyprien to be suspended.

  Let them think that one out.

  And probably decide not to alert Prigent’s controllers in St James’. That would be safest: not trusting them any more than they – SIS – trusted Baker Street. She – Rosie – had established her own credentials in that quarter, but by and large there was little love lost between the two establishments. You could hardly have blamed them if they ignored an SOE request to sit on such information until further notice; Prigent after all was their man, just as she was SOE’s girl. Could one imagine them not warning her if they heard she was in the Gestapo’s sights?

  Yes. If it suited them. If weightier considerations took priority. Yes, you could.

  Anyway, she’d passed the buck – or would have, once she’d got it away to Sevenoaks. The sooner the better. Have to take the Mark III along this morning, unfortunately.

  Go via Châteauneuf-du-Faou, perhaps – stop somewhere quiet to get the signal off, then park the set chez Lannuzel and pick it up again on the way home?

  A few extra kilometres’ pedalling, as compared with taking the road through Pleyben. Better than lugging it all the way to Quimper, though – and then having it with her while making the R/V with le Guen. Which she wasn’t much looking forward to, anyway. With every day that passed the risks had to increase. Whether they’d got on to Prigent through le Guen or on to le Guen via Prigent, that was the way it went: they were very much on to le Guen now, and every contact she had with him could be the one that led them to her.

  In any case, those other possibilities: telephone taps, sharp eyes open for a girl agent using the code-name Zoé, and maybe linking this to the two radio transmissions that had been made in recent days and a third one to come this morning. After which, Zoé would be putting herself on public exhibition on a park bench in conversation with a man the SD might very well be watching.

  Had to be chanced, anyway. Cowards died a thousand deaths, et cetera. Also, it seemed, lay around thinking up disaster scenarios when they could be getting up, getting dressed, encoding this signal – at the kitchen table, where it was warm, so OK, stoke the coal range first – then packing the valise with the Mark III and its battery at the bottom and medical odds and ends on top. Take half le Guen’s money in it too, maybe. He might accept it, today – if he’d had second thoughts. He might have had. Otherwise, if one was stopped and had to account for it, it could be explained as Peucat’s payment for the pharmaceuticals he was sending her there to collect.

  He’d be up too, by the time she’d done all that. She’d make coffee for them both, then get on the road.

  * * *

  Bitterly cold, still. Wind from the east, of course, the still frozen East where the Russians were beating the bejasus out of the bloody Boches. Until a week ago they had been, anyway. But here the sun was lifting out of ground-level murk into a clear sky; the day would warm up, soon enough. Starting off, she was pedalling straight into that low, coppery blaze: at Peucat’s suggestion, leaving St Michel eastward for Plounévez-du-Faou, thence southeastward to a wooded area near a village called Kérampresse. It turned out to have been good advice: a quiet, remote patch of country with good cover for herself and the bike and reasonably long views so you’d see anything that might be coming. She was on the air for only about three minutes – which wouldn’t have given the long-range detectors much time to get on to her – and Sevenoaks had nothing for her. Unsurprising, as they’d had nothing last night either, but it could also be taken as an indication that Saturday night’s drops were still on.

  Guy Lannuzel wasn’t at home, and Brigitte didn’t expect him back before evening. She was in overalls, had emerged from one of the hen-runs in time to save Rosie from the dogs – Collie crosses, wolflike, ravenous-looking. Certainly, she said – leave anything she liked, for as long as she liked.

  ‘You wouldn’t want this to be found.’

  ‘Oh.’ A nod. ‘All right.’

  ‘Do you have a workshop? Where Guy mends things?’

  ‘I’ll show you…’

  At the back of the barn where he kept his gazo and farm implements, a tool-bench and its surroundings were littered with bits of machinery and electrics. There was even an old car battery; she put the transceivers with it. Then the set itself, a carburettor on top of it – and the other components separately – aerial wire in a drawer full of a jumble of flex, and the headphones in a chest with other junk. None of it would look as if anyone had tried to hide it.

  ‘Thanks, Brigitte. Perfect.’ Fastening the valise, which was a lot lighter now. ‘I’ll be back to relieve you of it some time this afternoon.’

  Might stash her spare transceiver here when she had it, she thought – if Guy Lannuzel allowed it. The purpose of having a spare was as a replacement in case of irreparable breakdown or damage to this one, and to provide a degree of flexibility, so she could transmit from different locations without having to lug a set to and from the home base every time. You wouldn’t transmit from this farm, only collect the set en passant and find some spot like this morning’s, a few kilometres away. Or an empty house, ruined barn – whatever.

  She rode back into Châteauneuf, and out of it southwestward on the road for Briec. Last time she’d detoured via Trevarez, which had made the trip quite a bit longer. Last time: that had been her first day here, Saturday. Today was Wednesday – and this morning only one week ago, she realized, she’d been in the flat in Portman Square – sipping real coffee and nibbling chocolate biscuits, talking about ‘Hector’.

  * * *

  She told le Guen – on the park bench where he joined her just after one o’clock, having come dodging across from the river-bank side like a man avoiding shellfire – ‘From now on I won’t use the name “Zoé” on the telephone – if I have to ring you up again, which I hope I won’t – in case your line’s being tapped. I used “Zoé” elsewhere, you see, earlier on. It could ring a bell – and I’d sooner it didn’t.’

  ‘When you visited Prigent, you used it.’

  He could be sharper than one realized or expected. She glanced at him, and nodded: offering him a Gaullois, which he accepted eagerly. Perhaps the SD hadn’t started paying him for his work as an informer yet. She hadn’t told him yet about Kerongués – what she was going to tell him, perhaps with her fingers crossed… He sat huddled in his overcoat, although the day had warmed up considerably and she had hers folded on her knee
s. There were people straggling by in all directions, some just strolling, enjoying the spring sunshine; Rosie, watching them – idly, as one would – had as yet seen no one taking any interest in them. Although as likely as not you wouldn’t: just as in the café yesterday. Here the main advantage was that if they’d had a tail on him she’d probably have seen it when he’d come dodging over as he had.

  She explained – about not using the code-name ‘Zoé’ from now on, but having used it earlier – ‘Wouldn’t have meant anything to anyone, at that stage. But a lot’s been going on, hasn’t it? Your own visit to the SD for one thing, and my phone call to you on Monday. If they are monitoring your line.’

  ‘You think they would be?’

  ‘Might not. Might think with Marie-Claude locked up they’ve got you under their thumbs anyway. Any further contact with them yet?’

  ‘Yes. Fischer – the lieutenant – came to the office this morning and took me aside, asked me had I been in touch with Prigent yet.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘I’m seeing him this evening after work. The same routine – dental appointment. He sounded friendly – although of course that means nothing—’

  ‘He’ll be friendly as long as he believes you’re working for him. Just as they will. Was Fischer satisfied?’

  ‘He’s coming to the office again tomorrow.’

  ‘And you’ll make your first report then. Having seen Prigent tonight.’

  He’d nodded. Leaking smoke… A clutch of nuns passing: eyes down, hands folded. Coming the other way – in total contrast, passing this bench now, a group of Luftwaffe men, swaggering, loud-voiced. She went on – le Guen had drawn his legs in to give them more room – ‘Francois, listen – I have a report for you, about Kerongués.’

  Pale eyes on her, blinking into the sun… ‘I – didn’t like to ask.’