World War II Thriller Collection (89 page)

FLICK PAUSED AT
the entrance to the great hall of the château. Her pulse was racing and there was a cold sensation of fear in her chest. She was in the lions' den. If she were captured, nothing could save her.

She surveyed the room rapidly. Telephone switchboards had been installed in precise parade-ground rows, incongruously modern against the faded grandeur of the pink-and-green walls and the pudgy cherubs painted on the ceiling. Bundled cables twisted across the checkerboard marble floor like uncoiled ropes on the deck of a ship.

There was a hubbub of chatter from forty operators. Those nearest glanced at the new arrivals. Flick saw one girl speak to her neighbor and point to them. The operators were all from Reims and the surrounding district, many from Sainte-Cécile itself, so they would know the regular cleaners and would realize the Jackdaws were strangers. But Flick was gambling that they would say nothing to the Germans.

She oriented herself quickly, bringing to mind the plan Antoinette had drawn. The bombed west wing, to her left, was disused. She turned right and led Greta and Jelly through a pair of tall paneled doors into the east wing.

One room led to another, all palatial reception rooms full of switchboards and equipment racks that buzzed and clicked as numbers were dialed. Flick did not know whether the cleaners normally greeted the operators or passed them in silence: the French were great people for
saying good morning, but this place was run by the German military. She contented herself with smiling vaguely and avoiding eye contact.

In the third room, a supervisor in German uniform sat at a desk. Flick ignored her, but the woman called out, “Where is Antoinette?”

Flick answered without pausing in her stride. “She's coming.” She heard the tremor of fear in her own voice and hoped the supervisor had not noticed.

The woman glanced up at the clock, which said five past seven. “You're late.”

“Very sorry, madame, we'll get started right away.” Flick hurried into the next room. For a moment she listened, heart in her mouth, for an angry shout calling her back, but none came, and she breathed easier and walked on, with Greta and Jelly close behind.

At the end of the east wing was a stairwell, leading up to the offices or down to the basement. The Jackdaws were headed for the basement, eventually, but first they had preparations to make.

They turned left and moved into the service wing. Following Antoinette's directions, they found a small room where cleaning materials were stored: mops, buckets, brooms, and garbage bins, plus the brown cotton overall coats the cleaners had to wear on duty. Flick closed the door.

“So far, so good,” said Jelly.

Greta said, “I'm so scared!” She was pale and trembling. “I don't think I can go on.”

Flick gave her a reassuring smile. “You'll be fine,” she said. “Let's get on with it. Put your ordnance into these cleaning buckets.”

Jelly began to transfer her explosives into a bucket, and after a moment's hesitation Greta followed suit. Flick assembled her submachine gun without its rifle butt, reducing the length by a foot, to make it easier to conceal. She fitted the noise suppressor and flicked the switch for single-shot firing. When using the silencer, the chamber had to be reloaded manually before each shot.

She pushed the weapon under her leather belt. Then she put on an overall coat. It covered the gun. She left the buttons undone for quick access. The other two also put on overalls, concealing the guns and ammunition stuffed into their pockets.

They were almost ready for the basement. However, it was a high-security area, with a guard at the door, and French personnel were not allowed down there—the Germans cleaned it themselves. Before entering, the Jackdaws were going to create a little confusion.

They were about to leave the room when the door opened and a German officer looked in. “Passes!” he barked.

Flick tensed. She had been expecting some kind of security alert. The Gestapo must have guessed that Ruby was an Allied agent—no one else would be carrying an automatic pistol and a lethal knife—and it made sense for them to take extra precautions at the château. However, she had hoped that the Gestapo would move too slowly to interfere with her mission. That wish had not been granted. Probably they were double-checking all French personnel in the building.

“Quickly!” the man said impatiently. He was a Gestapo lieutenant, Flick saw from the badge on his uniform shirt. She took out her pass. He looked at it carefully, comparing the picture with her face, and handed it back. He did the same with Jelly and Greta. “I must search you,” he said. He looked into Jelly's bucket.

Behind his back, Flick drew the Sten gun from under her overall.

The officer frowned in puzzlement and took from Jelly's bucket the shockproof canister.

Flick disengaged the cocking lever of her gun from the safety slot.

The officer unscrewed the lid of the canister. Amazement dawned on his face as he saw the detonators.

Flick shot him in the back.

The gun was not really silent—the noise suppressor
was not perfectly effective—and the shot made a soft bang like a book being dropped on the floor.

The Gestapo lieutenant jerked and fell.

Flick ejected the cartridge and pulled back the bolt, then shot him again in the head to make sure of him.

She reloaded the chamber and put the gun back under her overall.

Jelly dragged the body to the wall and shoved it behind the door, where it would not be seen by anyone glancing casually into the room.

“Let's get out of here,” said Flick.

Jelly went out. Greta stood frozen and pale, staring at the dead officer.

Flick said, “Greta. We have a job to do. Let's go.”

At last Greta nodded, picked up her mop and bucket, and walked through the door, moving like a robot.

They went from the cleaning store into the canteen. It was empty but for two girls in uniform drinking coffee and smoking. Speaking French in a low voice, Flick said, “You know what you have to do.”

Jelly began to sweep the floor.

Greta hesitated.

Flick said, “Don't let me down.”

Greta nodded. She took a deep breath, straightened her back, and said, “I'm ready.”

Flick entered the kitchen, and Greta followed.

The fuse boxes for the building were in a cupboard off the kitchen, beside the large electric oven, according to Antoinette. There was a young German man at the kitchen stove. Flick gave him a sexy smile and said, “What have you got to offer a hungry girl?”

He grinned at her.

Behind his back, Greta took out a stout pair of pliers with rubberized handles, then opened the cupboard door.

. . . .

THE SKY WAS
partly cloudy, and the sun disappeared as Dieter Franck drove into the picturesque square of
Sainte-Cécile. The clouds were the same shade of dark gray as the slate roof of the church.

He noticed four guards at the château gate, instead of the usual two. Although he was in a Gestapo car, the sergeant carefully examined his pass and his driver's before opening the wrought-iron gates and waving the car in. Dieter was pleased: Weber had taken seriously the need for extra security.

A cool breeze blew as he walked from the car to the steps of the grand entrance. Passing into the hall and seeing the rows of women at their switchboards, he thought about the female secret agent Weber had arrested. The Jackdaws were an all-woman team. It occurred to him that they might try to enter the château disguised as telephonists. Was it possible? As he passed through the east wing he spoke to the German woman supervisor. “Have any of these women joined in the last few days?”

“No, Major,” she said. “One new girl was taken on three weeks ago, and she was the last.”

That put paid to his theory. He nodded and walked on. At the end of the east wing he took the staircase down. The door to the basement stood open, as usual, but there were two soldiers instead of the usual one standing inside. Weber had doubled the guard. The corporal saluted and the sergeant asked for his pass.

Dieter noticed that the corporal stood behind the sergeant while the sergeant checked the pass. He said, “The way you are now, it's too easy for someone to overpower you both. Corporal, you should stand to the side, and two meters away, so that you have a clear shot if the sergeant is attacked.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dieter entered the basement corridor. He could hear the rumble of the diesel-fueled generator that supplied electricity to the phone system. He passed the doors of the equipment rooms and entered the interview room. He hoped to find the new prisoner here, but the room was empty.

Puzzled, he stepped inside and closed the door. Then his question was answered. From the inner chamber came a long scream of utter agony.

Dieter threw open the door.

Becker stood at the electric shock machine. Weber sat on a chair nearby. A young woman lay on the operating table with her wrists and ankles strapped and her head clamped in the head restraint. She wore a blue dress, and wires from the electric shock machine ran between her feet and up her dress.

Weber said, “Hello, Franck. Join us, please. Becker here has come up with an innovation. Show him, Sergeant.”

Becker reached beneath the woman's dress and drew out an ebonite cylinder about fifteen centimeters long and two or three in diameter. The cylinder was ringed by two metal bands a couple of centimeters apart. Two wires from the electric shock machine were attached to the bands.

Dieter was accustomed to torture, but this hellish caricature of the sexual act filled him with loathing, and he shuddered with disgust.

“She hasn't said anything yet, but we've only just started,” Weber said. “Give her another shock, Sergeant.”

Becker pushed up the woman's dress and inserted the cylinder in her vagina. He picked up a roll of electrician's tape, tore off a strip, and secured the cylinder so that it would not fall out.

Weber said “Turn the voltage up this time.”

Becker returned to the machine.

Then the lights went out.

. . . .

THERE WAS A
blue flash and a bang from behind the oven. The lights went out, and the kitchen was filled with the smell of scorched insulation. The motor of the refrigerator ran down with a groan as the power
was cut off. The young cook said in German, “What's going on?”

Flick ran out of the door and through the canteen with Jelly and Greta hard on her heels. They followed a short corridor past the cleaning cupboard. At the top of the stairs Flick paused. She drew her submachine gun and held it concealed under the flap of her coat.

“The basement will be in total darkness?” she said.

“I cut all the cables, including the wires to the emergency lighting system,” Greta assured her.

“Let's go.”

They ran down the stairs. The daylight coming from the ground-floor windows faded rapidly as they descended, and the entrance to the basement was half-dark.

There were two soldiers standing just inside the door. One of them, a young corporal with a rifle, smiled and said, “Don't worry, ladies, it's only a power cut.”

Flick shot him in the chest, then swung her weapon and shot the sergeant.

The three Jackdaws stepped through the doorway. Flick held her gun in her right hand and the flashlight in her left. She could hear a low rumble of machinery and several voices shouting questions in German from distant rooms.

She turned on an electric torch for a second. She was in a broad corridor with a low ceiling. Farther along, doors were opening. She switched off the flashlight. A moment later she saw the flicker of a match at the far end. About thirty seconds had passed since Greta cut off the power. It would not be long before the Germans recovered from the shock and found flashlights. She had only a minute, maybe less, to get out of sight.

She tried the nearest door. It was open. She shone her flashlight inside. This was a photo lab, with prints hanging to dry and a man in a white coat fumbling his way across the room.

She slammed the door, crossed the corridor in two
strides, and tried a door on the opposite side. It was locked. She guessed, from the position of the room at the front of the château under a corner of the parking lot, that the room beyond contained the fuel tanks.

She moved along the corridor and opened the next door. The rumble of machinery became louder. She shone her flashlight once more, just for a split second, long enough to see an electricity generator—the independent power supply to the phone system, she assumed—then she hissed, “Drag the bodies in here!”

Jelly and Greta pulled the dead guards across the floor. Flick returned to the basement entrance and slammed the steel door shut. Now the corridor was in total darkness. As an afterthought, she shot the three heavy bolts on the inside. That might give her precious extra seconds.