World War II Thriller Collection (57 page)

Now he spoke in French, using a friendly tone. “I'm going to ask you some questions.”

“I don't know anything,” Gaston said.

“Oh, I think you do,” Dieter said. “You're in your sixties, and you've probably lived in or around Reims all your life.” Gaston did not deny this. Dieter went on: “I realize that the members of a Resistance cell use code names and give one another the minimum of personal information, as a security precaution.” Gaston involuntarily gave a slight nod of agreement. “But you've known most of these people for decades. A man may call himself Elephant or Priest or Aubergine when the Resistance meet, but you know his face, and you recognize him as Jean-Pierre the postman, who lives in the rue du Parc and surreptitiously visits the widow Martineau on Tuesdays when his wife thinks he is playing bowls.”

Gaston looked away, unwilling to meet Dieter's eye, confirming that Dieter was right.

Dieter went on, “I want you to understand that you are in control of everything that happens here. Pain, or the relief of pain; the sentence of death, or reprieve; all depend on your choices.” He saw with satisfaction that Gaston looked even more terrified. “You will answer
my questions,” he went on. “Everyone does, in the end. The only imponderable is how soon.”

This was the moment when a man might break down, but Gaston did not. “I can't tell you anything,” he said in a near-whisper. He was scared, but he still had some courage left, and he was not going to give up without a fight.

Dieter shrugged. It was to be the hard way, then. He spoke to Becker in German. “Go back to the cell. Make the boy strip naked. Bring him here and tie him to the pillar in the next room.”

“Very good, Major,” Becker said eagerly.

Dieter turned back to Gaston. “You're going to tell me the names and code names of all the men and women who were with you yesterday, and any others in your Resistance circuit.” Gaston shook his head, but Dieter ignored that. “I want to know the address of every member, and of every house used by members of the circuit.”

Gaston drew hard on his cigarette and stared at the glowing end.

In fact, these were not the most important questions. Dieter's main aim was to get information that would lead him to other Resistance circuits. But he did not want Gaston to know that.

A moment later, Becker returned with Bertrand. Gaston stared openmouthed as the naked boy was marched through the interview room into the chamber beyond.

Dieter stood up. He said to Hesse, “Keep an eye on this old man.” Then he followed Becker into the torture chamber.

He was careful to leave the door a little ajar so that Gaston could hear everything.

Becker tied Bertrand to the pillar. Before Dieter could intervene, Becker punched Bertrand in the stomach. It was a powerful blow from a strong man, and it made a sickening thud. The young man groaned and writhed in agony.

“No, no, no,” Dieter said. As he had expected, Becker's approach was completely unscientific. A strong young man could withstand being punched almost indefinitely. “First, you blindfold him.” He produced a large cotton bandana from his pocket and tied it over Bertrand's eyes. “This way, every blow comes as a dreadful shock, and every moment between blows is an agony of anticipation.”

Becker picked up his wooden club. Dieter nodded, and Becker swung the club, hitting the side of the victim's head with a loud crack of solid wood on skin and bone. Bertrand cried out in pain and fear.

“No, no,” Dieter said again. “Never hit the head. You may dislocate the jaw, preventing the subject from speaking. Worse, you may damage the brain, then nothing he says will be of any value.” He took the wooden club from Becker and replaced it in the umbrella stand. From the selection of weapons there he chose a steel crowbar and handed it to Becker.

“Now, remember, the object is to inflict unbearable agony without endangering the subject's life or his ability to tell us what we need to know. Avoid vital organs. Concentrate on the bony parts: ankles, shins, kneecaps, fingers, elbows, shoulders, ribs.”

A crafty look came over Becker's face. He walked around the pillar, then, taking careful aim, struck hard at Bertrand's elbow with the steel bar. The boy gave a scream of real agony, a sound Dieter recognized.

Becker looked pleased. God forgive me, Dieter thought, for teaching this brute how to inflict pain more efficiently.

On Dieter's orders, Becker struck at Bertrand's bony shoulder, then his hand, then his ankle. Dieter made Becker pause between blows, allowing just enough time for the pain to ease slightly and for the subject to begin to dread the next stroke.

Bertrand began to appeal for mercy. “No more, please,” he implored, hysterical with pain and fear. Becker raised the crowbar, but Dieter stopped him. He
wanted the begging to go on. “Please don't hit me again,” Bertrand cried. “Please, please.”

Dieter said to Becker, “It is often a good idea to break a leg early in the interview. The pain is quite excruciating, especially when the broken bone is struck again.” He selected a sledgehammer from the umbrella stand. “Just below the knee,” he said, handing it to Becker. “As hard as you can.”

Becker took careful aim and swung mightily. The crack as the shin broke was loud enough to hear. Bertrand screamed and fainted. Becker picked up a bucket of water that stood in a corner and threw the water in Bertrand's face. The young man came to and screamed again.

Eventually, the screams subsided to heartrending groans. “What do you want?” Bertrand implored. “Please, tell me what you want from me!” Dieter did not ask him any questions. Instead, he handed the steel crowbar to Becker and pointed to the broken leg where a jagged white edge of bone stuck through the flesh. Becker struck the leg at that point. Bertrand screamed and passed out again.

Dieter thought that might be enough.

He went into the next room. Gaston sat where Dieter had left him, but he was a different man. He was bent over in his chair, face in his hands, crying with great sobs, moaning and praying to God. Dieter knelt in front of him and prized his hands away from his wet face. Gaston looked at him through tears. Dieter said softly, “Only you can make it stop.”

“Please, stop it, please,” Gaston moaned.

“Will you answer my questions?”

There was a pause. Bertrand screamed again. “Yes!” Gaston yelled. “Yes, yes, I'll tell you everything, if you just stop!”

Dieter raised his voice. “Sergeant Becker!”

“Yes, Major?”

“No more for now.”

“Yes, Major.” Becker sounded disappointed.

Dieter reverted to French. “Now, Gaston, let's begin
with the leader of the circuit. Name and code name. Who is he?”

Gaston hesitated. Dieter looked toward the open door of the torture chamber. Gaston quickly said, “Michel Clairet. Code name Monet.”

It was the breakthrough. The first name was the hardest. The rest would follow effortlessly. Concealing his satisfaction, Dieter gave Gaston a cigarette and held a match. “Where does he live?”

“In Reims.” Gaston blew out smoke and his shaking began to subside. He gave an address near the cathedral.

Dieter nodded to Lieutenant Hesse, who took out a notebook and began to record Gaston's responses. Patiently, Dieter took Gaston through each member of the attack team. In a few cases Gaston knew only the code names, and there were two men he claimed never to have seen before Sunday. Dieter believed him. There had been two getaway drivers waiting a short distance away, Gaston said: a young woman called Gilberte and a man codenamed Maréchal. There were others in the group, which was known as the Bollinger circuit.

Dieter asked about relationships between Resistance members. Were there any love affairs? Were any of them homosexual? Was anyone sleeping with someone else's wife?

Although the torture had stopped, Bertrand continued to groan and sometimes scream with the agony of his wounds, and now Gaston said, “Is he going to be looked after?”

Dieter shrugged.

“Please, get a doctor for him.”

“Very well . . . when we have finished our talk.”

Gaston told Dieter that Michel and Gilberte were lovers, even though Michel was married to Flick, the blond girl in the square.

So far, Gaston had been talking about a circuit that was mostly destroyed, so his information had been mainly of academic interest. Now Dieter moved on to
more important questions. “When Allied agents come to this district, how do they make contact?”

No one was supposed to know how that was handled, Gaston said. There was a cut-out. However, he knew part of the story. The agents were met by a woman codenamed Bourgeoise. Gaston did not know where she met them, but she took them to her home; then she passed them on to Michel.

No one had ever met Bourgeoise, not even Michel.

Dieter was disappointed that Gaston knew so little about the woman. But that was the idea of a cut-out.

“Do you know where she lives?”

Gaston nodded. “One of the agents gave it away. She has a house in the rue du Bois. Number eleven.”

Dieter tried not to look jubilant. This was a key fact. The enemy would probably send more agents in an attempt to rebuild the Bollinger circuit. Dieter might be able to catch them at the safe house.

“And when they leave?”

They were picked up by plane in a field codenamed Champ de Pierre, actually a pasture near the village of Chatelle, Gaston revealed. There was an alternative landing field, codenamed Champ d'Or, but he did not know where it was.

Dieter asked Gaston about liaison with London. Who had ordered the attack on the telephone exchange? Gaston explained that Flick—Major Clairet—was the circuit's commanding officer, and she had brought orders from London. Dieter was intrigued. A woman in command. But he had seen her courage under fire. She would make a good leader.

In the next room, Bertrand began to pray aloud for death to come. “Please,” Gaston said. “A doctor.”

“Just tell me about Major Clairet,” Dieter said. “Then I'll get someone to give Bertrand an injection.”

“She is a very important person,” Gaston said, eager now to give Dieter information that would satisfy him. “They say she has survived longer than anyone else undercover. She has been all over northern France.”

Dieter was spellbound. “She has contact with different circuits?”

“So I believe.”

That was unusual—and it meant she could be a fountain of information about the French Resistance. Dieter said, “She got away yesterday after the skirmish. Where do you think she went?”

“Back to London, I'm sure,” Gaston said. “To report on the raid.”

Dieter cursed silently. He wanted her in France, where he could catch her and interrogate her. If he got his hands on her, he could destroy half the French Resistance—as he had promised Rommel. But she was out of reach.

He stood up. “That's all for now,” he said. “Hans, get a doctor for the prisoners. I don't want any of them to die today—they may have more to tell us. Then type up your notes and bring them to me in the morning.”

“Very good, Major.”

“Make a copy for Major Weber—but don't give it to him until I say so.”

“Understood.”

“I'll drive myself back to the hotel.” Dieter went out.

The headache began as he stepped into the open air. Rubbing his forehead with his hand, he made his way to the car and drove out of the village, heading for Reims. The afternoon sun seemed to reflect off the road surface straight into his eyes. These migraines often struck him after an interrogation. In an hour he would be blind and helpless. He had to get back to the hotel before the attack reached its peak. Reluctant to brake, he sounded his horn constantly. Vineyard workers making their slow way home scattered out of his path. Horses reared and a cart was driven into the ditch. His eyes watered with the pain, and he felt nauseous.

He reached the town without crashing the car. He managed to steer into the center. Outside the Hotel Frankfort, he did not so much park the car as abandon it. Staggering inside, he made his way to the suite.

Stéphanie knew immediately what had happened. While he stripped off his uniform tunic and shirt, she got the field medical kit out of her suitcase and filled a syringe with the morphine mixture. Dieter fell on the bed, and she plunged the needle into his arm. Almost immediately, the pain eased. Stéphanie lay down beside him, stroking his face with gentle fingertips.

A few moments later, Dieter was unconscious.

FLICK'S HOME WAS
a bedsitter in a big old house in Bayswater. Her room was in the attic: if a bomb came through the roof it would land on her bed. She spent little time there, not for fear of bombs but because real life went on elsewhere—in France, at SOE headquarters, or at one of SOE's training centers around the country. There was little of her in the room: a photo of Michel playing a guitar, a shelf of Flaubert and Molière in French, a watercolor of Nice she had painted at the age of fifteen. The small chest had three drawers of clothing and one of guns and ammunition.

Feeling weary and depressed, she undressed and lay down on the bed, looking through a copy of
Parade
magazine. Berlin had been bombed by a force of 1,500 planes last Wednesday, she read. It was hard to imagine. She tried to picture what it must have been like for the ordinary Germans living there, and all she could think of was a medieval painting of Hell, with naked people being burned alive in a hail of fire. She turned the page and read a silly story about second-rate “V-cigarettes” being passed off as Woodbines.

Her mind kept returning to yesterday's failure. She reran the battle in her mind, imagining a dozen decisions she might have made differently, leading to victory instead of defeat. As well as losing the battle, she feared she might be losing her husband, and she wondered if there was a link. Inadequate as a leader, inadequate as a wife, perhaps there was some flaw deep in her character.

Now that her alternative plan had been rejected, there was no prospect of redeeming herself. All those brave people had died for nothing.

Eventually she drifted into an uneasy sleep. She was awakened by someone banging on the door and calling, “Flick! Telephone!” The voice belonged to one of the girls in the flat below.

The clock on Flick's bookshelf said six. “Who is it?” she called.

“He just said the office.”

“I'm coming.” She pulled on a dressing gown. Unsure whether it was six in the morning or evening, she glanced out of her little window. The sun was setting over the elegant terraces of Ladbroke Grove. She ran downstairs to the phone in the hall.

Percy Thwaite's voice said, “Sorry to wake you.”

“That's all right.” She was always glad to hear Percy's voice on the other end of the phone. She had become very fond of him, even though he constantly sent her into danger. Running agents was a heartbreaking job, and some senior officers anaesthetized themselves by adopting a hard-hearted attitude toward the death or capture of their people, but Percy never did that. He felt every loss as a bereavement. Consequently, Flick knew he would never take an unnecessary risk with her. She trusted him.

“Can you come to Orchard Court?”

She wondered if the authorities had reconsidered her new plan for taking out the telephone exchange, and her heart leaped with hope. “Has Monty changed his mind?”

“I'm afraid not. But I need you to brief someone.”

She bit her lip, suppressing her disappointment. “I'll be there in a few minutes.”

She dressed quickly and took the Underground to Baker Street. Percy was waiting for her in the flat in Portman Square. “I've found a radio operator. No experience, but he's done the training. I'm sending him to Reims tomorrow.”

Flick glanced reflexively at the window, to check the weather, as agents always did when a flight was mentioned. Percy's curtains were drawn, for security, but anyway she knew the weather was fine. “Reims? Why?”

“We've heard nothing from Michel today. I need to know how much of the Bollinger circuit is left.”

Flick nodded. Pierre, the radio operator, had been in the attack squad. Presumably he was captured or dead. Michel might have been able to locate Pierre's radio transceiver, but he had not been trained to operate it, and he certainly did not know the codes. “But what's the point?”

“We've sent them tons of explosives and ammunition in the last few months. I want them to light some fires. The telephone exchange is the most important target, but it's not the only one. Even if there's no one left but Michel and a couple of others, they can blow up railway lines, cut telephone wires, and shoot sentries—it all helps. But I can't direct them if I have no communication.”

Flick shrugged. To her, the château was the only target that mattered. Everything else was chicken feed. But what the hell. “I'll brief him, of course.”

Percy gave her a hard look. He hesitated, then said, “How was Michel—apart from his bullet wound?”

“Fine.” Flick was silent for a moment. Percy stared at her. She could not deceive him, he knew her too well. At last she sighed and said, “There's a girl.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“I don't know whether there's anything left of my marriage,” she said bitterly.

“I'm sorry.”

“It would help if I could tell myself that I'd made a sacrifice for a purpose, struck a magnificent blow for our side, made the invasion more likely to succeed.”

“You've done more than most, over the last two years.”

“But there's no second prize in a war, is there?”

“No.”

She stood up. She was grateful for Percy's fond sympathy, but it was making her maudlin. “I'd better brief the new radioman.”

“Code name Helicopter. He's waiting in the study. Not the sharpest knife in the box, I'm afraid, but a brave lad.”

This seemed sloppy to Flick. “If he's not too bright, why send him? He might endanger others.”

“As you said earlier—this is our big chance. If the invasion fails, we've lost Europe. We've got to throw everything we have at the enemy now, because we won't get another chance.”

Flick nodded grimly. He had turned her own argument against her. But he was right. The only difference was that the lives being endangered, in this case, included Michel's. “Okay,” she said. “I'd better get on with it.”

“He's eager to see you.”

She frowned. “Eager? Why?”

Percy gave a wry smile. “Go and find out for yourself.”

Flick left the drawing room of the apartment, where Percy had his desk, and went along the corridor. His secretary was typing in the kitchen, and she directed Flick to another room.

Flick paused outside the door. This is how it is, she told herself: you pick yourself up and carry on working, hoping you will eventually forget.

She entered the study, a small room with a square table and a few mismatched chairs. Helicopter was a fair-skinned boy of about twenty-two, wearing a tweed suit in a checked pattern of mustard, orange, and green. You could tell he was English from a distance of a mile. Fortunately, before he got on the plane he would be kitted out in clothing that would look inconspicuous in a French town. SOE employed French tailors and dressmakers who sewed Continental-style clothes for agents (then spent hours making the clothes look worn and shabby so that they would not attract attention by their
newness). There was nothing they could do about Helicopter's pink complexion and red-blond hair, except hope that the Gestapo would think he must have some German blood.

Flick introduced herself, and he said, “Yes, we've met before, actually.”

“I'm sorry, I don't remember.”

“You were at Oxford with my brother, Charles.”

“Charlie Standish—of course!” Flick remembered another fair boy in tweeds, taller and slimmer than Helicopter, but probably no cleverer—he had not taken a degree. Charlie spoke fluent French, she recalled—something they had had in common.

“You came to our house in Gloucestershire once, actually.”

Flick recalled a weekend in a country house in the thirties, and a family with an amiable English father and a chic French mother. Charlie had had a kid brother, Brian, an awkward adolescent in knee shorts, very excited about his new camera. She had talked to him a bit, and he had developed a little crush on her. “So how is Charlie? I haven't seen him since we graduated.”

“He's dead, actually.” Brian looked suddenly grief-stricken. “Died in forty-one. Killed in the b-b-bloody desert, actually.”

Flick was afraid he would cry. She took his hand in both of hers and said, “Brian, I'm so terribly sorry.”

“Jolly nice of you.” He swallowed hard. With an effort he brightened. “I've seen you since then, just once. You gave a lecture to my SOE training group. I didn't get a chance to speak to you afterwards.”

“I hope my talk was useful.”

“You spoke about traitors within the Resistance and what to do about them. ‘It's quite simple,' you said. ‘You put the barrel of your pistol to the back of the bastard's head and pull the trigger twice.' Scared us all to death, actually.”

He was looking at her with something like hero-worship in his eyes, and she began to see what Percy had
been hinting at. It looked as if Brian still had a crush on her. She moved away from him, sat at the other side of the table, and said, “Well, we'd better begin. You know you're going to make contact with a Resistance circuit that has been largely wiped out.”

“Yes, I'm to find out how much of it is left and what it is still capable of doing, if anything.”

“It's likely that some members were captured during the skirmish yesterday and are under Gestapo interrogation as we speak. So you'll have to be especially careful. Your contact in Reims is a woman codenamed Bourgeoise. Every day at three in the afternoon she goes to the crypt of the cathedral to pray. She's generally the only person there but, in case there are others, she'll be wearing odd shoes, one black and one brown.”

“Easy enough to remember.”

“You say to her, ‘Pray for me.' She replies, ‘I pray for peace.' That's the code.”

He repeated the words.

“She'll take you to her house, then put you in touch with the head of the Bollinger circuit, whose code name is Monet.” She was talking about her husband, but Brian did not need to know that. “Don't mention the address or real name of Bourgeoise to other members of the circuit when you meet them, please: for security reasons, it's better they don't know.” Flick herself had recruited Bourgeoise and set up the cut-out. Even Michel had not met the woman.

“I understand.”

“Is there anything you want to ask me?”

“I'm sure there are a hundred things, but I can't think of any.”

She stood up and came around the table to shake his hand. “Well, good luck.”

He kept hold of her hand. “I never forgot that weekend you came to our house,” he said. “I expect I was a frightful bore, but you were very kind to me.”

She smiled and said lightly, “You were a nice kid.”

“I fell in love with you, actually.”

She wanted to jerk her hand out of his and walk away, but he might die tomorrow, and she could not bring herself to be so cruel. “I'm flattered,” she said, trying to maintain an amiably bantering tone.

It was no good: he was in earnest. “I was wondering . . . would you . . . just for luck, give me a kiss?”

She hesitated. Oh, hell, she thought. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the lips. She let the kiss linger for a second, then broke away. He looked transfixed by joy. She patted his cheek softly with her hand. “Stay alive, Brian,” she said. Then she went out.

She returned to Percy's room. He had a pile of books and a scatter of photographs on his desk. “All done?” he said.

She nodded. “But he's not perfect secret agent material, Percy.”

Percy shrugged. “He's brave, he speaks French like a Parisian, and he can shoot straight.”

“Two years ago you would have sent him back to the army.”

“True. Now I'm going to send him off to Sandy.” At a large country house in the village of Sandy, near the Tempsford airstrip, Brian would be dressed in French-style clothes and given the forged papers he needed to pass through Gestapo checkpoints and buy food. Percy got up and went to the door. “While I'm seeing him off, have a look at that rogues' gallery, will you?” He pointed to the photos on the desk. “Those are all the pictures MI6 has of German officers. If the man you saw in the square at Sainte-Cécile should happen to be among them, I'd be interested to know his name.” He went out.

Flick picked up one of the books. It was a graduation yearbook from a military academy, showing postage stamp–sized photos of a couple of hundred fresh-faced young men. There were a dozen or more similar books, and several hundred loose photos.

She did not want to spend all night looking at mug shots, but perhaps she could narrow it down. The man in
the square had seemed about forty. He would have graduated at the age of twenty-two, roughly, so the year must have been about 1926. None of the books was that old.

She turned her attention to the loose photographs. As she flicked through, she recalled all she could of the man. He was quite tall and well dressed, but that would not show in a photo. He had thick dark hair, she thought, and although he was clean-shaven, he looked as if he could grow a heavy beard. She remembered dark eyes, clearly marked eyebrows, a straight nose, a square chin . . . quite the matinee idol, in fact.