Code Name- Beatriz

by Lou Cadle

  The airplane engine noise faded into nothing, and the parachute fell to the ground with a whisper. She helped him from the remaining straps and then backed off. His sigh was audible. Then, very quietly: “Sorry. Heights terrify me. I’m good now.”

  “Bernard, yes?” she said in French, giving his code name. “We need to get you under cover.”

  “Oui,” he said. “Je suis Bernard. But my French stinks.”

  Dear God, it really did. She switched to English. “I’m Beatriz. We’ll get you to a safe house in a moment.”

  “Am I in time? Hesse is here?”

  “Not yet arrived. We’ll explain later, when we’re indoors and have you safe. We must move in silence.” She hoped he was talkative from nervousness, from his fear of parachuting, and not from habit. If the latter, it was a habit he would have to break for his short time here.

  Edgard stayed behind to bury the parachute. Genevieve went ahead on a bicycle to check for any dangers on the road. Antonia, Claude, and Bernard walked together.

  Only once did Genevieve pedal madly back and tell them to get off the road and into hiding. They trotted several yards into a field and squatted among old corn stalks, where the silvered moonlight would not touch them. Antonia pressed on the back of Bernard’s head so he would lower it, hiding the white of his face. She did the same, bowing her head until the car passed. A single car, a private car, she thought, from the delicate engine sound. After that, there were no interruptions.

  When Claude led them down the same street that she recognized, she hoped he wasn’t billeting them together. She hadn’t asked about Bernard’s sleeping arrangements. But Claude turned to the flaking green door that he had led her to earlier today and knocked in code, opened the door himself, and the three of them went in. No one was awake inside.

  “Beatriz is staying here as well,” Claude said to Bernard. “For now, this is the safest place for you. We’ll move one of you if we can find another safe place, but if not, you won’t be here long.”

  “We won’t share a room?” Bernard said.

  “Cellar,” Antonia said. “It’s roomy enough.” It was dank and dark and she felt trapped there, with only the one exit, but it was the best Claude could do for now. Leonce’s brief capture had many members of the circuit—the auxiliary ones, who participated in no direct sabotage operations—nervous, as Claude had explained to her this morning. The plan was to let her return to Madame Charlevoix as soon as Claude felt that was safe, but for now, she was stuck in the cellar. Along with this new man.

  “We’ll go down the stairs,” Claude said, and he led the way, using his torch to light the steep stairs. He seemed to be as familiar with and comfortable in this house as he had been at Madame Charlevoix’s. “Where’s your lantern?” he asked her.

  “Here. I’ll get it,” she said, and went to retrieve and light it.

  When the lantern was lit, Claude went back and closed the cellar door. Upon coming back down, he shook Bernard’s hand and introduced himself.

  In English, Bernard said, “What news is there? I understand that Hesse is coming soon?”

  Claude answered in English. “It will be at least four days because of a train mishap that needs to be cleared first. But yes, he is still scheduled to come via rail. There will be a dinner the night of his arrival, and meetings all the next day.”

  “Do you have a plan to snatch him?” Bernard said.

  “Snatch?”

  Antonia said, “Kidnap,” which was the French word as well.

  “It is being planned.”

  “He will likely have a guard at all times—or two, I should think,” Bernard said.

  “Why do you say this?”

  “If what we believe is true, he is that important.”

  “What is it he can do with radar? In simple terms, please,” Claude said.

  Bernard said, “It is possible to use radar to target more accurately. With a narrow beam, you can paint a target with a special signal.”

  “Paint?” Claude said, frowning. “As with a brush?”

  “Very much like that, an invisible brush. The nearer you are to the target, the more tightly focused your beam is—a smaller brush, if you’ll allow—and therefore more accurate.”

  “You are working on this same project for England?”

  “No,” he said. “I was briefed. But I understand the idea. And I understand its value. So do our superiors. They were mightily upset to hear of the work being done, which they had already feared, and mightily pleased that he might come within our grasp.”

  “You know this man?”

  “We were in school together for three years. Not the best of mates, you understand? But we had a pint together now and again.”

  Antonia spoke up. “And removing him might delay their developing this new weapon?”

  “Targeting system, but yes. There can’t be many with the background—or, to be frank, the intelligence—of Hesse working on it. This is a case where one man might make or break the war, or at least this one bit of it. Cut off the head of this project, and it will mean something.”

  “Are you willing to kill him if it comes to that?” Antonia said.

  His head jerked back an inch in surprise. “That’s not my job, is it?”

  “It could be,” she said. “You might be the only one with access to him, for one reason or another.”

  Claude said, “You might, for instance, be the only one who survives the operation of kidnapping him.”

  “Well, I would, of course, in that case,” Bernard said, “though I wouldn’t relish it.” His back straightened. “But for King and country, yes.”

  His answer did not give her perfect confidence in him. “How much training have you had?”

  “Almost none for this spy stuff. I can shoot. I hunt. But this past day has been a whirlwind of new information. How to jump, how to escape a tail, how to code, which I rather like.”

  “You couldn’t have had much practice at it.”

  “I’m a quick study, they said.” He tilted his head and studied her. “You’re not English. Where are you from?”

  “They missed telling you, then, that we do not talk about such things.”

  “Loose lips sink ships,” he said, nodding. “Furtive Fritz and all that.”

  Claude said, “She is right. Silence is our best defense.”

  “I won’t talk,” Bernard said. “Not ever.”

  Antonia hoped not. “In any case, as far as you know, my name is Beatriz, I’m pretending to be a French secretary of some sort, and I’ve never been to England.”

  Claude said to her in French, “This might be a mistake, having someone untrained here.”

  She glanced between the two men and answered in French. “We can do the first part without him. We can keep him here, and when we have Hesse, bring this one to him.”

  “What?” Bernard said.

  She switched to English. “I said we could bring Hesse to you. Do you think if you had Hesse alone, you could turn him?”

  “To be honest, I’m disinclined to believe he’d betray his country. But I will try my best.”

  “Was he an out and out nationalist?” she asked. “In university?”

  “No, not really. Less than some of the fellows there. But he is doing the work for them. I doubt very much that it’s under duress. All he would have to do if he wasn’t a Nazi would be to bury his idea, or alter his test results. In which case, he wouldn’t be a person of importance to them.”

  “This is true,” Claude said. “It would be easy enough for a top scientist to misdirect them. If he is the head thinker behind the entire program, he isn’t a reluctant soldier in the war.”

  “But I was instructed to try and turn him, and I’ll try,” Bernard said. “What he knows would be of use to us if he has grown disillusioned with his masters. That must be our hope.”

  “Do you English have a similar program with the radar painting?” Claude asked.

  One side of Bernard’s mou
th lifted in a smile that was not a smile. “Loose lips sink ships.”

  It was something of a relief to see he could keep a secret.

  “I’ll ask him to defect, and I have authorization to offer him incentives to do so.”

  Claude nodded. “I hope they are enough. If not?”

  “Then I have authorization to try and make him talk, however I can.”

  And then to kill him, Antonia thought. For once all methods had been tried to extract intelligence from the man, whether they succeeded or not, Hesse remaining alive would pose a risk to them all. He certainly could not be released, for he might identify them, or be able to identify the place where he was held. This Bernard, once a casual friend of Hesse, would have to find some way to turn him, or Hesse would die.

  Antonia did not trust that Bernard had it in him to do it. Time would tell, but her heart told her he was not vicious enough, or angry enough.

  She was.

  “What else do you have for us?” Claude asked him. “News? Instructions?”

  “Nothing, really. Just that he will be guarded, the security experts think. So it won’t be easy to get him alone.”

  “Would he approach you if he saw you, do you think?”

  “If he’s all in with the Nazis, he’d point me out to a guard and tell them to shoot me, I would think. He knows I’m Canadian, and—”

  “Canadian?” Antonia said. “I thought you were English.”

  “No.”

  “How long have you been over here?”

  “University. And again since the war started. Came about Thanksgiving. Early October, that is,” he said.

  No years of fascism before that, not like that she had known. Far from the war, he had had it easy. She found herself resenting it. He didn’t carry the weary, almost hopeless attitude that everyone in Europe had been burdened with.

  None of that was his fault, but she couldn’t help blaming him anyway, just a little, for a cheerful openness that she would never again have.

  Claude was talking again. She shook off her self-pitying thoughts and listened. “Two days,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was thinking. Two days until what?”

  “We’ll meet again in two days. Someone you know, Beatriz, will come for you.”

  “That’s good,” she said.

  “Don’t wander on the streets,” Claude said to Bernard. “Stay safe.” And he left.

  Chapter 17

  “If I wanted to stay safe, I wouldn’t be here,” said Bernard.

  “Canadians do not speak French?” she said. “I thought they did.”

  “Not where I lived,” he said. He glanced around. “I say, there isn’t any place to sleep here. Not even a lousy cot.”

  “There’s a blanket,” she pointed out. “You can have it.”

  “The only one?” he said.

  “Yes. I found rolling myself in it most useful. The floor is packed earth, as you see, and as cold as the air.”

  “I can’t take a blanket from a woman,” he said. “Don’t be daft.”

  “We can flip a coin for it,” she said. “I have a coin in my pocket.”

  “I was given some,” he said, and began to search through his own pockets. “Here. Vichy notes, right? There are the coins.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do they say?” He was holding one up, tilting it this way and that, trying to catch the light to read it.

  She did not need to look to answer. “Travail, famille, patrie. Work, family, fatherland.”

  “Meaning Germany?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bastards.” He made a face and looked guilty. “Sorry. I’ll watch my language. Too much time with only men. You know, the engineering fellows—”

  She help up a hand. “You must learn not to reveal anything about yourself.”

  “Even to you?”

  “Especially to me.” She frowned at him. He seemed a child, though from his look, he must be nearly as old as she. “This is what happens,” she said. “You get captured, and they torture you. They beat you, they burn you, they kick you. They electrocute you between the eyes.” She touched herself there. “They do it over and over and don’t let you sleep. You will tell them everything you know, and then you will make up more than you know because they won’t stop the torture, not until they have wrung every last drop of intelligence from you. And they’d do the same to me.”

  “Surely not. You’re a woman.”

  “I’m an agent and an enemy of their state. They do it to women every day. And they’d rape me.” Her SOE trainers had not tiptoed around that fact.

  He flinched back from hearing it.

  “And they might rape you. Or just cut off your testicles. Or both.”

  He blinked.

  “And if the knife is there, held against your tender parts, you might tell them everything they ask. And then you’d lose your manhood anyway, the literal as well as your pride in your strength.”

  “All right, all right.” He patted the air. “No need to go on.”

  “I think maybe there is.” Yet she did not say more. He seemed sobered and thoughtful, and in her experience, men did not like being lectured by women, even if the woman knew more. She took out a franc and said, “Call heads or tails.”

  “You keep the blanket. I’ll be fine.”

  “Heads or tails. You must choose.”

  “Tails, then!”

  She flipped it. “I keep the blanket.” She held the coin out for him to examine it.

  “I trust you.”

  She shook her head. “Tomorrow, as we have nothing to do but wait, we will work on your trust and try to eliminate it. I will teach you more about operational security. And enough French to get by on the street in an emergency.”

  He gave her a grin. “Bossy little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Supremely,” she said, in French. The word was close enough in both languages that he should catch it.

  When she didn’t drop his gaze or return his smile, he lost his. “All right. I suppose I do need the French. Just in case.”

  “We should sleep,” she said, “so get yourself comfortable. There’s a piss jar under the steps should you need it in the night, just under the second step.”

  * * *

  They’d been working all the next day on his training when he stopped her soon after midday. They were not using the lantern but the light that came in through a pair of small, sooty windows high in the wall, windows too small to allow an escape should they be cornered down here. “I’m sorry. I’ve had enough.”

  “In French please.”

  He switched languages. “I am sorry. I can’t work—” He fumbled for a moment, and she saw him find a possible phrase. “All the time?”

  She suggested several ways to say that he couldn’t or wouldn’t continue working. The last one she suggested made his eyebrows go up.

  He spoke in English. “That’s saying I can’t work with you any longer.”

  “Good!” she said. “Yes, that’s what it meant. You knew more French than you claimed.”

  “Not much at all,” he said, “and my head hurts from it, but I rather enjoy working with you. You’re a good teacher.”

  “You’ve done well,” she said. And she hadn’t disliked working with him either. She had thought last night she might not, fearing that he was weak, or not serious enough, or not suited for this work. “You seem a different man today than yesterday. I thought you would fight me today.”

  “About learning to survive? No. I’m not a stupid fellow, I don’t think.” He looked sheepish. “I may have understated my fear of heights. The jump from that plane shook me badly.”

  “Then you were brave to do it at all.”

  “Or cowardly to fear it in the first place,” he said.

  “Fear of heights is a rational fear,” she said. “You are on top of a building, you fall, you meet the pavement with great speed—that’s not a healthful event. Survival instinct.”


  “Seems to me you spies—and I don’t count myself among you at all, mind you—that you spies have to ignore your survival instincts every minute of the day.” He stood and stretched. They had been sitting on the bottom steps, as it was warmer than sitting on the packed-earth floor. “And I hate to admit it, but I’m hungry, and I can’t think well when I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”

  She nearly denied it but then stopped herself. He wasn’t the Gestapo, and she needn’t present a false face of strength to him, not about something so trivial. “I am, and I hope someone remembers we need food.” She spared a thought for Madame Charlevoix and her kindness. She hadn’t eaten heartily there, but she had eaten twice a day. And the rolls had kept her through her night up in the hills.

  “Whoever lives here seems not to be at home. We could sneak into the kitchen and raid the pantry.”

  “He works, I believe. Is at work now. But I wouldn’t steal food, not from one of the few willing to take this risk for us. I could buy some food if you like.”

  “It’s a danger to go into the streets, is it not?”

  “Always. But I speak the language and have false papers.”

  “Maybe we should get back to school and keep you safe inside. At least language lessons distract me from my stomach.”

  “Let’s switch topics. Let me tell you about losing someone who is following you.”

  He rubbed his temples and sighed. “All right, but can I stand while I listen?”

  “Of course.” While he stood and stretched himself, she cast her mind back to her own training, the lectures. “Awareness, identification, evasion. Those are the three steps.”

  She wasn’t far into her lecture when the door creaked open behind her. She jumped up and pushed at him, meaning for him to get back into the darkest corner under the stairs and hide. But a familiar voice came down the stairs. “I am here.” Genevieve.

  “Come down,” she said, dropping her hold on Bernard.

  The girl clattered down the steps, holding two baskets. “I brought food and supplies.” She didn’t have a spare hand to close the door behind her, so additional light spilled into the cellar from the windows of the upper story.

  “Let me help,” Bernard said, coming forward.