The Prisoner

by Robert Muchamore

  There was a ninety-minute wait to link up with two carriages full of German soldiers at Metz, a halt for a ‘surprise’ additional customs check that regular passengers said happened every trip, and finally delays outside Paris because they’d arrived in the morning rush hour and there were no free platforms at the station.

  Marc felt a kind of cautious elation as he looked out the window, noticing all the little details that differentiate one country from another: French vehicle licence plates, French road signs, types of houses, shops and clothes.

  It looked like home, but Paris Nord Station was a stark reminder that France was under German occupation. There were more German uniforms here than anywhere Marc had been in Frankfurt and the French passengers were made to stand at a security barrier for twenty minutes while soldiers and then German civilians got priority.

  Only a tiny proportion of passengers were searched by the Gendarmes7 at the head of the platform and Marc had no problem.

  He’d grown used to Frankfurt, where civilians moved about freely, but he only got as far as the station exit before encountering another checkpoint. This time everyone was expected to flash their identity cards, but Marc’s prisoner transfer documents didn’t pass muster and he was taken aside and made to sit in a small waiting room.

  He spent a nervous fifteen minutes, sitting between a towering Belgian with a sack of tools between his legs and an exhausted-looking woman who’d arrived from Germany without documents for her newborn baby.

  Marc was called into an office by a bored-looking Gendarme, who took Marc’s latest false name and put stamps on several pieces of paper, before directing him to travel four stops on the Metro to an office where he could register for his new identity and ration cards.

  The last time Marc rode the Metro was two summers earlier, just before the German army arrived. The ticket offices now accepted Reichsmarks, but gave change in less valuable French francs. To save electricity the Germans had removed all the light bulbs from Metro carriages, so Marc had the eerie experience of rattling through underground tunnels in the pitch-dark.

  Marc expected to spend hours queuing for his new identity, but the process was remarkably efficient. After a short queue, his photo was taken, then he was asked a few simple questions. His thumb was inked and a thumbprint added and by the time the blank identity card, employment status card, tobacco entitlement card and seven-day emergency ration card had been filled out a man had emerged from the darkroom with his freshly developed photograph.

  ‘You’ll need to register locally for a permanent ration card and get your identity card updated once you have a fixed address,’ the woman explained. ‘As you’re over fourteen, you’re required to register for work at a Labour Administration office by Friday at the latest.’

  She adopted a more friendly tone before continuing in a quieter voice. ‘If I were you, I’d try sorting out a job before you register for work. If you turn up and say you’re unemployed, they’ll send you straight to the truck factory on Ile Sequin.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Marc said gratefully.

  Marc’s new identity was Michel DePaul, fourteen years old. He’d told the clerk he was born in Dunkirk. The record office there had burned to the ground during the evacuation of British troops two years earlier, making it impossible to trace a birth certificate.

  When he hit the pavement outside the office, Marc felt like making some big, triumphant, fist shaking, I’ve done it, gesture. But this would have attracted attention, and the moment coincided with a bicycle fitted with a number plate whizzing past.

  The thought of number plates on bicycles amused Marc, but it was another sign of the tight lid the Germans now kept on their French subjects. And it would make life way more difficult if he ever needed to steal a bike.

  *

  Marc’s position was stronger than when he’d been creeping around Frankfurt two days earlier, but his ultimate goal to rejoin his espionage unit in Britain was still a long way off.

  Marc planned to settle in Paris for at least a week. There were dormitories where working men could pay by the night, and with over half of the working-age men in France held prisoner in Germany, he thought it shouldn’t be too hard to find a job.

  Security was tight. But Paris felt no more overbearing than what Marc had experienced in the rest of German-occupied France, and he reckoned it would be easier to go unnoticed in a city of four million than in a small town or village.

  Marc had given a lot of thought to what he’d do after he arrived in Paris, both before his original failed escape, and over the past few days. It boiled down to three options:

  (1) Travel back to Lorient and try making contact with the espionage circuit he’d been working for when he’d been arrested eleven months earlier. Marc had once favoured this plan but deeper thought unearthed serious flaws:

  Firstly, getting to Lorient required a special permit to enter a restricted military zone. Second, Lorient was the first place the Gestapo would go looking for him. Third, eleven months is a long time in espionage terms and Marc might arrive to find that his circuit had disbanded, or been rumbled by German agents.

  (2) Travel south into Vichy France and try making contact with friendly officials at the American embassy. If this failed, keep moving south and try crossing the border into Spain.

  A special pass called an Ausweiss was required to cross into Vichy France, but thousands of people crossed from north to south every day and getting a pass, or sneaking across the border, wasn’t impossible.

  However, America and Germany had declared war on each other while Marc was in prison and he had no idea if the American embassy in Vichy had been closed down.

  If he had to escape into neutral Spain, it would involve a dangerous foot crossing over the Pyrénées mountain range and Marc had no idea how tough the border security was.

  (3) Finally, Marc could try making contact with a Paris-based resistance group. If they had a radio transmitter they’d be able to get a message to British intelligence, saying that he was safe and asking for instructions on the best way to get to Britain.

  Marc decided to pick this third plan, but it relied on patience and a degree of luck to unearth resisters who were trying not to be found. Plus, any resistance circuit with decent security procedures would be extremely wary when Marc approached them and told an unlikely sounding story about being a fourteen-year-old British intelligence agent.

  Note

  7 Gendarme – a French civilian police officer.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Marc queued twenty minutes for fresh bread that cost three times what he’d expected it to, then found a street he remembered with a few dormitory houses and a half reasonable one with beds to rent.

  On Marc’s first visit to Paris he’d been unable to stomach the stench and filth of a working man’s dorm. But even the grottiest dorms had flush toilets, single beds with sheets and mattresses, electric light, and other facilities that felt like paradise compared to a prison hulk in Germany.

  Unfortunately, inflation had also taken its toll on the room rate. Marc didn’t have enough money to cover one night and the landlady looked like she was going to bounce him head first down the front steps when he asked for credit.

  Needing some fast money, Marc found a pawn broker’s shop and tried to sell the pocket watch. It was a nice piece, but a message engraved in German meant the broker turned up his nose.

  ‘How’s a French boy end up with a watch like that?’ he asked, running a hand through slicked-back grey hair.

  Marc realised he should have prepared a story. ‘Guy my aunt was sleeping with,’ he stuttered.

  ‘You stole it off the bedside table?’

  ‘It’s not stolen. He gave it to her.’

  The pawn broker laughed and slid the watch back across the counter. ‘Funny thing to give to a lady. You know what the Germans will do to me if they catch me with a soldier’s stolen watch?’

  ‘I think it’s silver though,’
Marc said. ‘I need to get back on my feet. Enough money to pay for a dorm room for a couple of nights, that’s all I’m asking for it.’

  But offering to sell cheap only confirmed the pawn broker’s opinion that the watch was stolen.

  ‘You’re lucky I don’t call the Gendarmes on you,’ the broker said, as he pointed at the door. ‘I think it’s time you left.’

  Marc backed out, and walked the next couple of streets at a brisk pace, just in case the broker decided to cause trouble. He didn’t think he could face another pawn broker, so over the next couple of hours Marc pounded pavements, stopping in every bar, cafe and restaurant asking if they wanted a waiter or a cigarette boy.

  One place offered a meal if he scrubbed a vast mound of pots, but there was nobody paying cash. The long walk and warm weather brought Marc out in a sweat and for the first time since he’d been shaved in hospital, he felt the familiar itch of body lice partying under his arms.

  Marc had only slept in short bursts on the overnight train, so when it got to 6:30 he was struggling to keep his eyes open and his ankles were seizing up. Paris had a 10 p.m. curfew for any French person not travelling to or from work.

  It seemed ludicrous for Marc’s escape to go awry because he was short a few measly Francs, but his prison camp in Frankfurt had been full of men scooped up on minor charges such as drunkenness, urinating in public, or breaking curfew.

  With no realistic prospect of landing a job and getting paid within the next three hours, Marc no longer had the luxury of trying to get money by honest means. His friend and fellow agent PT Bivott had taught him how to run card tricks, but Marc didn’t have cards and you needed regular practice. This left thieving as his only option.

  Marc was starving, so he entered a crowded cafe and exchanged two precious ration tickets and most of his remaining cash for a meal of carrot and celery soup, followed by a titchy piece of white fish served on a bed of green beans and potatoes.

  It was the first proper sit-down meal he’d eaten in ages, and two glasses of red wine gave him courage as he watched a pair of busy waitresses going back and forth, stuffing money in the till. His plan was simple: leap over the counter, open the cash drawer, grab a bundle of money and run like hell.

  Marc was all set, and even counted three, two, one, go in his head. But he was still rooted to his chair fifteen seconds later when the waitress asked if he’d enjoyed his meal, and whether he’d mind moving to the bar because there was a queue of patrons waiting for tables.

  ‘It was very good,’ Marc said, as he drained his glass of red.

  The bold plan suddenly felt less wise: it was a busy area, and with so many customers around it only took one person to stick a leg out and trip him, or one determined man who could outrun a fourteen-year-old with tired legs.

  Marc realised the booze had almost made him brave enough to try something suicidal as he sauntered off along a street of cafes and bars.

  He was disgusted by the German soldiers and airmen with dolled-up French girls on their arms and wished these women could see the conditions their brothers, fathers and husbands were enduring in camps a few hundred kilometres west.

  A frail creature caught Marc’s eye. She was stepping out of a cafe, with a fat waiter making a big fuss over her, draping a fur cape over her back and begging the old girl to come back soon. She had pearls on her neck, and rings with diamonds the size of ladybirds.

  Marc felt sure there’d be plenty of Francs in her black leather bag and followed her away from the main drag down a side street. There was hardly anyone about and all it would take was a good shove to knock her down and a tug to rip the bag off her shoulder. But Marc had been knocked about all his life, by teachers, by thugs like Fischer, by his orphanage director and a Gestapo officer who’d ripped his front teeth out.

  He’d seen sadism in little kids at the orphanage – the ones who stamped on baby ducklings and bent weaker boys’ fingers back for the hell of it. Although Marc had killed ruthlessly when under pressure, he had a strong sense of right and wrong and ripping off a little old lady turned him into all the things he was fighting against.

  So Marc let her toddle down into a Metro station and walked back towards the action. For the next hour he wandered. It was almost nine. Bars and restaurants were winding down as French people headed off to beat the curfew.

  Marc decided to use his last coins to buy a beer in a near-empty cafe. The staff were getting ready to close up. Instead of the risky snatch-and-grab he’d planned earlier, he decided on a sneak raid behind the counter as the staff mopped the floor and stacked chairs on tables.

  He was about to enter the cafe when he noticed a German officer, sitting outside a restaurant with his coat draped over the back of a chair. He was leaning forward, with his attention fixed on the teenager he was groping, while his leather wallet poked from an inside pocket practically begging to be pinched.

  It felt like fate. There were plenty of other people in the street, and Marc had to make sure nobody was looking, without it being obvious that he was making sure nobody was looking.

  After a deep breath, he approached the back of the chair. At the last second the officer broke off from the teenager, but Marc was committed. The girl saw exactly what happened and looked around, clearly shocked.

  ‘You OK?’ the German asked.

  Marc expected the teenager to start shouting, followed by the German standing and pulling a pistol on him. But the girl – who looked no older than sixteen – just gave an awkward smile and slapped the side of her neck.

  ‘I got bitten,’ she stuttered. ‘Insect, or something.’

  Marc couldn’t believe his luck, but he was so scared that everything was going in slow motion and his limbs felt like wooden stumps.

  The German laughed noisily. ‘If you’ve got fleas I hope you don’t give them to me.’

  Marc pushed the wallet into his trouser pocket, walking as fast as he dared without it looking dodgy.

  When he got into a side street and checked nobody was behind him, Marc backed up to the wall. He was shaking with pure terror and hated the fact that despite all the espionage training he’d been through, his survival was down to pure dumb luck.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The officer’s wallet was a good score. It left Marc with enough French Francs to get by for two or three days, and German Reichsmarks for a few more after that. He abandoned the wallet in a dark Metro carriage, while riding five stops back towards the dormitory he’d scouted earlier on.

  A fifteen-minute queue to get papers checked coming out of the Metro station brought Marc precariously close to ten o’clock curfew, though it was a nice feeling when the German handed his identity card back with a polite, ‘Thank you, move along.’

  Marc banged on the door of the dormitory house, but the woman he’d spoken to earlier would only shout through the letterbox.

  ‘We’re full. Can’t you read the bloody sign?’

  Marc gasped. ‘But you said you had loads of room!’

  ‘Half a symphony orchestra came and filled me up. Whoever pays first gets the bed.’

  ‘But it’s five minutes to ten. Can you let me in? What if I sleep on a chair, or in the hallway?’

  ‘All my residents are in and the door’s bolted,’ the woman said.

  The slamming letterbox flap was her final word.

  Marc raced down the street, but apparently the symphony orchestra had filled up the other two dormitory houses as well, and now it was four minutes past ten. Based on what he’d heard in Lorient, people picked up after curfew generally got a couple of nights in the cells and a stiff fine, but he’d met enough curfew breakers in Germany to know that deportation wasn’t out of the question.

  ‘Have you got any ideas where I can go?’ Marc asked, at the third place.

  The man gave him directions to another dormitory house several streets away. There was no lighting because of the blackout, and the dead streets reinforced Marc’s opinion that curfew was not something p
eople took lightly.

  He walked briskly, ignoring growing tiredness and aches in his legs. His heart thudded and he reached full-on panic when he realised he’d taken a wrong turn.

  The fourth dormitory house was above a laundry. He rang the doorbell and waited a full minute before trying a shout through the letterbox.

  ‘Hello? Can someone help me, please?’

  A first-floor window came open and a hairy-chested man with a cigar butt hanging off his lips looked down.

  ‘If you don’t stop that racket, I’ll sling the piss pot over your head,’ he shouted. ‘Now sod off.’

  Marc heard an entire dorm erupt with laughter at his expense.

  ‘I need somewhere to stay,’ he begged. ‘The floor, the hallway. I don’t want to get picked up.’

  ‘That’s not my lookout,’ the man shouted. ‘I’ve warned you once. If I have to come down there you’ll be sorry.’

  The window slammed and Marc turned around, thinking about luck: one minute a pretty girl turns a blind eye and saves your life. Half an hour later a symphony orchestra turns up and completely screws you over.

  It was gone quarter past ten now. Marc didn’t know any more dormitory houses, and he was well away from the small area of Paris he knew well.

  Rather than spend hours hunting for a room, with the constant risk of getting busted, he decided to bed down in the first decent hiding spot he found. Anything would do: a back garden, the landing on a set of fire stairs, or even a big dustbin.

  The street Marc was in was mostly shops, with no gaps or hiding places between them. He glanced down side streets, but they all looked the same. When he got to the third street he had to dash, because he was within sight of a bar crammed with singing German soldiers.

  The fourth turning looked more hopeful, but Marc only made ten paces past the corner when a torch beam lit him up. It shone from the doorway of a small Renault car with two gendarmes stepping out.

  Marc thought about running, but the officer on the driver’s side had his gun drawn, and you’d have to be a really bad shot to miss from this range.