Authors: Robert Ryan
Now Robert was firing, holding the Sten all wrong, hand on the magazine, sure way to jam it, but the damn thing didn’t have the guts to jam on an angry Robert and the nine-millimetre slugs zinged into the wreckage ahead of them.
All or nothing. Williams squeezed the trigger to empty the magazine and at seven hundred rounds per minute the bullets were gone in an instant. Not a dicky bird. He turned to get the hell out of there.
The explosion of fuel knocked him back against the Atlantic as a fireball rolled and boiled around the truck, greedily engulfing the damaged radio station as well. Whether the timing pencils clicked in or the gelignite went—the plastic was pretty inert—a second, deeper, more energetic detonation spun pieces of metal and debris high into the air. Finally, reluctantly, with a high-pitched tearing sound, the radio mast started to lean, shift and turn as it fell on to the pyre, generating a dense cloud of metallic fireflies which spiralled up into the dark night.
Williams was already in the Atlantic, its wheels smoking as Robert yanked it round and sped up the track, sliding the back dangerously on each bend, while Williams smiled at a third explosion, consuming what was left of the complex.
They made the main road and headed into the forests, retracing their route through the backroads and unused pathways that Robert had picked out to circumvent any patrols and road blocks. The trees blurred by at terrifying speed, Robert risking a flash of dim lights only when absolutely necessary. Williams let out a long breath of stale air, slumped down in the seat and closed his eyes, confident that his friend wouldn’t wrap them round a trunk.
‘Arm,’ said Robert.
Williams looked down at his torn shirt and winced as his fingers found the wound underneath, a one-inch gouge through the muscle.
‘All right,’ he said with more hope than conviction. The trough of raw meat was beginning to sting.
Robert glanced across. ‘Yeah, you’ll heal.’ He pointed to the cracks and starring at the corner of the windshield where two bullets had passed through and said with mock anger, ‘Do you know how much a new one of these fucking things costs?’
Hans Keppler, a handkerchief over his face to try to filter out the worst of the smell of burnt rubber and human flesh, surveyed the tangled ruin of what had once been a fine piece of German technical engineering but was now a smouldering piece of scrap metal with the chassis of a truck embedded in it. Medics were extracting what charred remains they could from the mess, and laying them out on stretchers. Only one completely intact body had been located, and that was blackened beyond recognition. The day was already warm, thought Keppler, by the next day this charnel house would stink worse than ever.
Keppler looked at Neumann. Organised. Daring. Anything?’
‘We have one sentry who saw a car. Low, fast. Two men, he thinks. But he died before he could say much more. Lost too much blood.’
‘What’s the nearest village?’ asked Keppler.
‘Place called Boissy. We’ve already shot four of them.’
Keppler raised an eyebrow. Hitler had ordered reprisals for acts of terrorism in the previous September, but this seemed a little too hasty.
‘Two Jews and two Communists,’ said Neumann by way of explanation. People who deserved to die whether Boissy was implicated or not. ‘Just to help the recollection process of the rest.’
‘I want the village fined a million francs. No more retaliatory measures for the moment.’ Keppler used the approved term
Vergeltungssanktionen,
retaliation rather than reprisal. General Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the Militärbefehlshaber of France, had forbidden the word reprisals and even hostages from being used to describe the response to terrorism. ‘If we find the expiators—’—
Suhnepersonen
, another new term—‘used the village and villagers in any way, then I suggest we transport all the males for labour work in Germany. Better than wasting bullets.’
And a safer, more elegant solution, thought Keppler. Sabotage on the scale of this attack was rare. But when it did happen, all concerned knew that the Germans would take revenge on the population. Keppler wondered if that was part of the aim of the perpetrators—to radicalise the population by having the Occupiers seen as brutal thugs. If so, it was a callous, but effective policy on behalf of the Resistance. Which is why Keppler preferred what General Keitel called
Nacht und Nebel—
the disappearance of the Reich’s enemies into the Night and Fog, leaving their loved ones in ignorance of their whereabouts or state of health, and as an important bonus, snuffing out the opportunity to create martyrs for their futile cause.
‘Do you think the Laurent woman might have any knowledge of this?’
Keppler shook his head, disappointed. ‘No.’
‘You indulge her. Sir.’
‘She’ll break. I know the type. You don’t have to touch them. Her mind does it all for you.’ Keppler also quite enjoyed the rumour over at the Hotel Lutetia where the Abwehr were convinced he had acquired himself a British spy as a willing mistress.
Keppler took the handkerchief away from his mouth and walked briskly towards his white-spattered Opel staff car. He turned to Neumann. ‘Everything ready for
Le Grand Rafle
?’
‘Yes. I have ordered a hundred extra coffins. Two hundred pairs of handcuffs. Black-out curtains for the buses which will take those not to be transported to execution and two thousand litres of fuel for burning the corpses of the dead.’
‘Burning where?’ asked Keppler, out of curiosity.
‘Père-Lachaise. Most adults for resettlement will go to Drancy, families and children to the Velo.’
Drancy was an unfinished housing estate near Le Bourget which had been operating as a holding camp for Jews since May 1941; the Velo was the cycle track, the Velodrome d’Hiver. All would eventually be put on transports to the east, where God alone knew what awaited them. Although, in this case, Keppler could second guess the deity.
They climbed inside the car and Keppler ordered his driver to proceed. The
rafle
, Keppler had decided, was folly. The Jews were not going anywhere. They had no radios, no bicycles, longer curfew hours and, since May, all over the age of six were required to wear the yellow star. Keppler would forget the Jews for now, and work on cases such as this act of destruction. He took one last glance back at the carnage and said to Neumann: ‘I don’t want you wasting days on this Big Round-up. Just do it quickly. And remember—use gendarmes where you can, that way it will be seen as a French operation. And we can get on with catching these terrorists.’
A
UGUST
1942
I
N THE DARKNESS
Williams pulled Eve closer to him and she stirred. More than a month since the attack at the chalk pit. No new instructions, not so much as a ‘well done’ from London. Probably punishment for not having a radio. Now it was back to waiting. Waiting for a young girl to turn into the drive, or a half-track full of soldiers or a black Citroën full of Sonderkommando. It was getting to Eve more than him, he knew.
Robert was travelling to Paris more and more to see his mother, who had a suspected liver ailment and was in and out of hospital. At least it kept him occupied. Wimille had gone back to living it up as best he could in Paris, swearing he would be ready whenever he was called upon. In a strange way, he said, he had enjoyed it. Nothing strange about it, thought Williams. They just all needed whatever stupid drug risking their lives generated. Some more than others, that was all.
‘Will.’
Eve had opened one eye.
‘Hmm.’
‘I want to go to Normandy for a while.’
‘Why?’
‘To see the dogs.’
‘They’ll be all right.’ A neighbour was feeding and exercising the terriers.
‘They’ll forget who I am.’
‘They’re dogs,’ he said. ‘They love whoever feeds them.’ She poked him hard and he sighed. ‘If you wish. You’ll need travel documents.’
‘Maurice said he can fix me up.’
‘When did you see Maurice?’
‘In town. A week ago.’
Williams sat up. ‘You’ve been plotting this for a week?’
‘Plotting? Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been thinking about it. I could go and see my parents, make sure the dogs are fine. I’ll be away a week or two at most.’
‘I don’t want to be without you.’
‘Come with me.’
He looked into her eyes to see if she was serious, but the smirk told him she was just echoing another situation where he had been the one doing the leaving. And for a lot longer than two weeks. She knew that him travelling around was an unnecessary risk. Women still attracted less attention than men young enough to be working in the Reich’s munitions factories. ‘How is Maurice?’
‘Fine. Funny thing, he offered me a refrigerator.’
‘Why?’
‘He said he had come into a couple.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said we’d think about it.’
‘Say no.’
‘Why?’
Williams slid out of bed. Dawn was breaking, streaking the sky a deep orange. At one time the return of the sun meant the end of nightmares, the solar angel driving away the demons. Not any longer. The horrors seemed to go on, day or night now. Not so much here, in the country, but Paris was like a wounded animal turning on itself, devouring its own rancid flesh in a desperate bid to survive. ‘Because you don’t know where it’s come from.’
‘You don’t mind taking his
Ausweissen
.’
‘That’s different. That’s for a good cause.’
He turned to face her, and even in the gloom she could tell by the set of his jaw he was deadly serious. She decided that one victory, his acquiescence over her travelling, was enough for one morning. ‘Okay, Will. No refrigerator.’
In the soft early dawn light he saw the figure at the gate and reached down for the Colt pistol beside the bed. He looked back. Gone. Then he saw her again, pushing her bicycle down the drive. Beatrice. Or one of her friends. A year ago the Germans would let a pretty young girl come and go with near impunity. It never occurred to them that young French women would be part of a clandestine organisation. Now, since they had uncovered dozens of underground printing presses and Resistance cells, they had realised the glue holding them together—the runners, messengers, lookouts, distributors—were, as often as not, the same smiling girls they whistled at in the street.
Williams pulled on some clothes, shoved the gun in his waistband and went down to greet the courier. No, he couldn’t go on risking their young lives. Maybe London was right. Time to get a pianist in.
Maurice looked down the list on the desk in front of him and ticked two names, Pierre Tavel and Jean Leffe. He glanced up at Keppler who was staring out at the splendid chestnuts in the central ribbon of the boulevard and the grand
poules
, the high-class prostitutes who had always lived on Foch, sunning themselves on the grass.
‘Tavel, I am pretty sure,’ said Maurice softly. ‘Leffe’s real name is Szlifkes. Polish Jew.’
Keppler nodded. This was tedious work, but each department had been given a quota of Jews to identify. RSHA, the mother organisation of the SD and Gestapo in Berlin, estimated 800,000 Jews in France, perhaps a quarter or a fifth of that in Paris. The numbers didn’t add up. The
rafles
had failed to find anything like that amount. Rather than accept that they might have inflated the figures, Eichmann had told the Gestapo and SD to flush out those hiding under aliases or being harboured by sympathetic French families.
Keppler walked over and examined the list. He flicked the pages. There were eight ticks in all. ‘Not many, Maurice.’
This was the third time Maurice had visited the office, the third occasion he had had to shut his mind to the consequences of his actions, identifying people he knew were naturalised Jews, who would fail the Nazi criteria on parentage, and be resettled along with the thousands of others. Still, if he didn’t do it …
‘Well, I’ve already given you most of the ones I know. Surely there can’t be many left in the city?’
‘Berlin thinks there must be. They think they are out there somewhere, waiting to cause trouble.’
‘What do you think, Sturmbannführer?’
Keppler laughed and fished himself a cigar from a beautiful red mahogany and brass humidor, recently arrived on his desk from an apartment over in the 7th that had been vacated the day before the round-up. A tip off, he suspected. Either a sentimental gendarme or one who charged exorbitantly to supply news of impending actions.
He swivelled the container to Maurice, who selected a fat Jamaican. ‘I don’t think about things like this. Orders come from RSHA, I obey them, then get on with my real job. Which, I should remind you, is the pursuit of enemies of the state. At least, those more dangerous than Jewish doctors and bankers.’
Maurice nodded. He knew Keppler was a reasonable man.
‘So, what is it to be this time, Maurice? Eight names … a couple of
Ausweissen
for you to continue your scurrilous smuggling activities or another visit to the warehouse?’
The great storage sheds near Gare de Lyon were stuffed full of the possessions of Jews who were caught in the big trawl-in on 16 and 17 of July. Sure, Maurice felt sorry for them, but there was everything from tables to refrigerators going begging. Shame to let it rot. But in the end he said: ‘The
Ausweissen
would be most useful. My mother is not well and—’
‘Stop. Spare me the weasly excuses.’ Keppler signed the paperwork and handed it over to Maurice. ‘Let’s see if your memory improves next time you have to visit poor ailing Mama.’
Maurice grabbed the permissions to travel, which he would split with Robert, and hurried out, closing his ears to some of the more extreme sounds echoing down the corridors and out into the fresh air, ignoring the protests of his bad leg.
The meeting was on the banks of the Canal St Martin, up near La Villette. As with the horse butchers in Montmartre, the cafés hereabouts were the haunts of the slaughtermen and the herders, and probably as safe as anywhere in Paris, but Williams knew that the army of collaborationist eavesdroppers had grown as rations had shrunk. People had to eat, feed what was left of their families. So meetings were best arranged in the open air, away from the cafés where random raids were becoming more and more common.