World War II Thriller Collection (90 page)

She returned to the generator room, closed the door, and turned on her flashlight.

Jelly and Greta had pushed the bodies behind the door and stood panting with the effort. “All done,” Greta murmured.

There was a mass of pipes and cables in the room, but they were all color-coded with German efficiency, and Flick knew which was which: fresh-air pipes were yellow, fuel lines were brown, water pipes were green, and power lines were striped red-and-black. She directed her torch at the brown fuel line to the generator. “Later, if we have time, I want you to blow a hole in that.”

“Easy,” said Jelly.

“Now, put your hand on my shoulder and follow me. Greta, you follow Jelly the same way. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Flick turned off her flashlight and opened the door. Now they had to explore the basement blind. She put her hand to the wall as a guide and began to walk, heading farther inside. A confused babble of raised voices revealed that several men were blundering about the corridor.

An authoritative voice said in German, “Who closed the main door?”

She heard Greta reply, but in a man's voice, “It seems to be stuck.”

The German cursed. A moment later there was the scrape of a bolt.

Flick reached another door. She opened it and shone her flashlight again. It contained two huge wooden coffers the size and shape of mortuary slabs. Greta whispered, “Battery room. Go to the next door.”

The German man's voice said, “Was that a flashlight? Bring it over here!”

“Just coming,” said Greta in her Gerhard voice, but the three Jackdaws walked in the opposite direction.

Flick came to the next room, led the other two inside, and closed the door before shining her flashlight. It was a long, narrow chamber with racks of equipment along both walls. At the near end of the room was a cabinet that probably held large sheets of drawings. At the far end, the beam of her flashlight revealed a small table. Three men sat at it holding playing cards. They appeared to have remained sitting during the minute or so since the lights went out. Now they moved.

As they rose to their feet, Flick leveled her gun. Jelly was just as quick. Flick shot one. Jelly's pistol cracked and the man beside him fell. The third man dived for cover, but Flick's flashlight followed him. Both Flick and Jelly fired again, and he fell still.

Flick refused to let herself think about the dead men as people. There was no time for feelings. She shone her flashlight around. What she saw gladdened her heart. This was almost certainly the room she was looking for.

Standing a meter from one long wall was a pair of floor-to-ceiling racks bristling with thousands of terminals in tidy rows. From the outside world the telephone cables came through the wall in neat bundles to the backs of the terminals on the nearer rack. At the farther end, similar cables led from the backs of the terminals up through the ceiling to the switchboards
above. At the front of the frame, a nightmare tangle of loose jumper wires connected the terminals of the near rack to those of the far one. Flick looked at Greta. “Well?”

Greta was examining the equipment by the light of her own flashlight, a fascinated expression on her face. “This is the MDF—the main distribution frame,” she said. “But it's a bit different from ours in Britain.”

Flick stared at Greta in surprise. Minutes ago she had said she was too frightened to go on. Now she was unmoved by the killing of three men.

Along the far wall more racks of equipment glowed with the light of vacuum tubes. “And on the other side?” Flick asked.

Greta swung her torch. “Those are the amplifiers and carrier circuit equipment for the long-distance lines.”

“Good,” Flick said briskly. “Show Jelly where to place the charges.”

The three of them went to work. Greta unwrapped the wax-paper packets of yellow plastic explosive while Flick cut the fuse cord into lengths. It burned at one centimeter per second. “I'll make all the fuses three meters long,” Flick said. “That will give us exactly five minutes to get out.” Jelly assembled the fire train: fuse, detonator, and firing cap.

Flick held a flashlight while Greta molded the charges to the frames at the vulnerable places and Jelly stuck the firing cap into the soft explosive.

They worked fast. In five minutes all the equipment was covered with charges like a rash. The fuse cords led to a common source, where they were loosely twisted together, so that one light would serve to ignite them all.

Jelly took out a thermite bomb, a black can about the size and shape of a tin of soup, containing finely powdered aluminum oxide and iron oxide. It would burn with intense heat and fierce flames. She took off the lid to reveal two fuses, then placed it on the ground behind the MDF.

Greta said, “Somewhere in here are thousands of cards showing how the circuits are connected. We should burn them. Then it will take the repair crew two weeks, rather than two days, to reconnect the cables.”

Flick opened the cupboard and found four custom-made card holders containing large diagrams, neatly sorted by labeled file dividers. “Is this what we're looking for?”

Greta studied a card by the light of her flashlight. “Yes.”

Jelly said, “Scatter them around the thermite bomb. They'll go up in seconds.”

Flick threw the cards on the floor in loose piles.

Jelly placed an oxygen-generating pack on the floor at the blind end of the room. “This will make the fire hotter,” she said. “Ordinarily, we could only burn the wooden frames and the insulation around the cables, but with this, the copper cables should melt.”

Everything was ready.

Flick shone her flashlight around the room. The outer walls were ancient brick, but the inner walls between the rooms were light wooden partitions. The explosion would destroy the partition walls and the fire would spread rapidly to the rest of the basement.

Five minutes had passed since the lights went out.

Jelly took out a cigarette lighter.

Flick said, “You two, make your way outside the building. Jelly, on your way, go into the generating room and blow a hole in the fuel line, where I showed you.”

“Got it.”

“We meet up at Antoinette's.”

Greta said anxiously, “Where are
you
going?”

“To find Ruby.”

Jelly warned, “You have five minutes.”

Flick nodded.

Jelly lit the fuse.

. . . .

WHEN DIETER PASSED
from the darkness of the basement into the half-light of the stairwell, he noticed that the guards had gone from the entrance. No doubt they were fetching help, but the ill discipline infuriated him. They should have remained at their post.

Perhaps they had been forcibly removed. Had they been taken away at gunpoint? Was an attack on the château already under way?

He ran up the stairs. On the ground floor, there were no signs of battle. The operators were still working: the phone system was on a separate circuit from the rest of the building's electricity, and there was still enough light coming through the windows for them to see their switchboards. He ran through the canteen, heading for the rear of the building, where the maintenance workshops were located, but on the way he looked into the kitchen and found three soldiers in overalls staring at a fuse box. “There's a power cut in the basement,” Dieter said.

“I know,” said one of the men. He had a sergeant's stripes on his shirt. “All these wires have been cut.”

Dieter raised his voice. “Then get your tools out and reconnect them, you damn fool!” he said. “Don't stand here scratching your stupid head!”

The sergeant was startled. “Yes, sir,” he said.

A worried-looking young cook said, “I think it's the electric oven, sir.”

“What happened?” Dieter barked.

“Well, Major, they were cleaning behind the oven, and there was a bang—”

“Who? Who was cleaning?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“A soldier, someone you recognized?”

“No, sir . . . just a cleaner.”

Dieter did not know what to think. Clearly the château was under attack. But where were the enemy? He left the kitchen, went to the stairwell, and ran up toward the offices on the upper floor.

As he turned at the bend in the stairs, something
caught his eye, and he looked back. A tall woman in a cleaner's overall was coming up the stairs from the basement, carrying a mop and a bucket.

He froze, staring at her, his mind racing. She should not have been there. Only Germans were allowed into the basement. Of course, anything could have happened in the confusion of a power cut. But the cook had blamed a cleaner for the power cut. He recalled his brief conversation with the supervisor of the switchboard girls. None of them was new to the job—but he had not asked about the Frenchwomen cleaners.

He came back down the stairs and met her at ground level. “Why were you in the basement?” he asked her in French.

“I went there to clean, but the lights are out.”

Dieter frowned. She spoke French with an accent that he could not quite place. He said, “You're not supposed to go there.”

“Yes, the soldier told me that, they clean it themselves, I didn't know.”

Her accent was not English, Dieter thought. But what was it? “How long have you worked here?”

“Only a week, and I've always done upstairs until today.”

Her story was plausible, but Dieter was not satisfied. “Come with me.” He took her arm in a firm grip. She did not resist as he led her through to the kitchen.

Dieter spoke to the cook. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“Yes, sir. She's the one who was cleaning behind the oven.”

Dieter looked at her. “Is that true?”

“Yes, sir, I'm very sorry if I damaged something.”

Dieter recognized her accent. “You're German,” he said.

“No, sir.”

“You filthy traitor.” He looked at the cook. “Grab her and follow me. She's going to tell me everything.”

. . . .

FLICK OPENED THE
door marked Interview Room, stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and swept the room with her flashlight.

She saw a cheap pine table with ashtrays, several chairs, and a steel desk. The room was empty of people.

She was puzzled. She had located the prison cells on this corridor and had shone her flashlight through the judas in each door. The cells were empty: the prisoners the Gestapo had taken during the last eight days, including Gilberte, must have been moved somewhere else . . . or killed. But Ruby had to be here somewhere.

Then she saw, on her left, a door leading, presumably, to an inner chamber.

She switched off her flashlight, opened the door, stepped through, closed the door, and switched on her flashlight.

She saw Ruby right away. She was lying on a table like a hospital operating table. Specially designed straps secured her wrists and ankles and made it impossible for her to move her head. A wire from an electrical machine led between her feet and up her skirt. Flick guessed immediately what had been done to Ruby and gasped with horror.

She stepped to the table. “Ruby, can you hear me?”

Ruby groaned. Flick's heart leaped: she was still alive. “I'll free you,” she said. She put her Sten gun down on the table.

Ruby was trying to speak, but her words came out as a moan. Swiftly, Flick undid the straps that bound Ruby to the table. “Flick,” Ruby said at last.

“What?”

“Behind you.”

Flick jumped to one side. Something heavy brushed her ear and thumped her left shoulder hard. She cried out in pain, dropped her flashlight, and fell. Hitting the floor she rolled sideways, moving as far as possible from
her original position so that her assailant could not hit her again.

She had been so shocked by the sight of Ruby that she had not shone her flashlight all around the room. Someone else had been lurking in the shadows, waiting for his chance, and had slowly crept up behind her.

Her left arm was momentarily numbed. Using her right hand, she scrabbled on the floor for her flashlight. Before she found it, there was a loud click, and the lights came on.

She blinked and saw two people. One was a squat, stocky man with a round head and close-cropped hair. Behind him stood Ruby. In the dark Ruby had picked up what looked like a steel bar, and she held it above her head in readiness. As soon as the lights came on, Ruby saw the man, turned, and brought the steel bar down on his head with maximum force. It was a crippling blow, and the man slumped to the floor and lay still.

Flick got up. The feeling was rapidly returning to her arm. She picked up the Sten gun.

Ruby was kneeling over the prone body of the man. “Meet Sergeant Becker,” she said.