Authors: Robert Ryan
The first police bullet smacked past him and down the boulevard. Robert began to look around. Pedestrians, mostly old women, were frozen in position, wide mouthed with a mixture of horror and excitement, unsure of how to react.
The Musée Grevin, with its waxwork tableaux, was opposite. No escape that way. Another bullet. A shrill whistle summoning help, blast after blast. Robert raised the Browning and shot at the van where Farnoux and the driver were crouched, both blowing for assistance at the top of their lungs. A crowd was gathering. A charcoal-powered car had stopped, the driver unsure what to do about a gunfight in the Boulevard Montmartre. Sirens. Lots of them. Robert ran, south, through the art nouveaux-covered Galeries, elbowing aside the first shoppers scurrying out to snap up the day’s meagre produce.
The noise and shouts behind him told him the police were giving chase. His heart thumping, he swerved left and right until he emerged from the arcade into a long, narrow street running east towards Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, Williams’ old stomping ground.
He began to run straight ahead, down the road, picking up his feet to make sure he didn’t trip on the uneven paved surface. Another shot. Robert risked a glance behind and saw maybe six or seven uniforms powering after him. A round burned through the outer part of his leg and he felt himself stumbling headlong as the muscle jerked in pain. He hit the road, rolled, and came up with the Browning outstretched. Think. How many rounds? It’s a High Power. German model. Nine millimetre parabellum round. He’d reloaded the bloody gun time and time again but his brain was mush. Seven … no, thirteen. Thirteen rounds. He’d already used three, or four. He had enough left to take a few with him.
On they came, eight of them, slowed now, getting ready to close in for the kill, like a pack that knows it has its prey cornered, relishing this moment. He had slain one of their number. They weren’t going to take him alive. They weren’t going to let him go slowly. No quick bullet for him.
Robert pumped two rounds at them and the cops stopped, hesitating. No hits. They were crouching, difficult targets at this range. He stood, ignoring the flash of agony in his leg. Look at that later. If there was a later. He fired another shot. One of the police groaned and clutched his shoulder.
The other seven started to yell and came at him, firing as they went, caution gone, bullets splaying round him. Robert dived to the wall as if it could wrap and protect him.
A vase came first. It shattered in front of the lead policeman and he blithely carried on, unaware of its significance.
The gramophone hit the cop full on with a deadly inert impact, sending the man to the floor as if poleaxed, a huge flap of red scalp dangling free. Robert looked up. A table was arcing through the air. Books. Another vase. All rained down like some strange biblical plague of household objects. Robert smiled to himself. Resistance.
A full chamberpot smashed into the cops, who began to huddle together like a Roman tortoise formation, but without the shields to protect their backs. A guitar. More vases. A sewing machine, breaking bones as it slammed into a shoulder. The air grew thick with domestic detritus, some of which must have been of great sentimental value. A small cupboard. Bottles of cleaning fluid exploded around them with muffled explosions. Some kind of caustic soda detonated in their midst and there were screams. Robert fired again, joining in the ritual assault on the men with something more lethal than bleach. One of the cops hit the floor, rolled and was still. A washstand hit him and the body arched, but no more. Dead. A radio, a precious radio, eviscerated itself on the cobbles.
From the apartments above more and more rained down and Robert backed off, heading for the streets where he knew he could find safety. There was an enormous groaning sound and a balcony gave way, an upright piano heaved over the edge tearing the metalwork and huge lumps of concrete free, disintegrating with spectacular echoing dissonance.
The police began to retreat, walking at first, then running, back to get their colleagues and return in greater numbers, leaving three sprawled in the road, slowly disappearing under random cairns created from the bric-a-brac of other people’s lives. The shutters and windows began to slam shut, the stories of innocence already being concocted, the occupants only now beginning to wonder just what they had done. Robert raised his arms, tears in his eyes, proud of his countrymen for the first time since he knew not when and shouted:
‘Vive la France!’
Keppler took his charges to the police station at Rambouillet and Williams was transferred to a windowless van, chained to a ring in the side, two German soldiers guarding him. Keppler had said he would talk to him when they got Robert. ‘When?’ Williams had laughed. ‘If.’
Keppler smiled back. ‘When,’ he repeated. Eve was loaded separately. The Women’s Section was in a different building.
After a slow, jolting drive through the southern suburbs of Paris the van drew to a halt. He knew where he was. Fresnes Prison, the great hulking fortress on the outskirts of the city, was taking on the same symbolic mantle as the Bastille. This was a place where awful injustices happened, where all flesh was corruptible, malleable, where you lived and died by the whims of jailers more evil than any of their charges.
Williams was unlocked from the ring, handcuffed, and led into the outside world. The large cobbled courtyard was surrounded by towering walls with tiny slit windows. In the little amount of bright summer sunshine that managed to penetrate this well, the walls’ rancid, diseased surfaces looked vile enough, thought Williams. God only knew what this place was like at the dead of night when most inmates arrived. In the corner were two bodies, crumpled and ignored, both bearing the marks and strangely angled limbs of savage beatings.
Williams was pushed firmly through the huge, over-sized metal doors, clearly designed to make the prisoners feel insignificant, as if giants really walked this earth. He was marched into a cold, echoing hallway, where his details were entered into the prison log while a selection of French and Germans eyed him up, as if vying for the chance to lay into him. Williams stayed calm, answered the questions curtly but correctly, giving his name as Charles Lelong. He was then taken by a German NCO and two French warders downstairs, along a grim, sweaty passageway, and into an internal courtyard, this one lined and criss-crossed with galleries and gangways, resounding to the crunch of hobnailed boots, shouted orders and the odd thunk of wood and rubber on flesh.
Williams’ cell was on the lower level, which meant it had no window. The darkness was probably a blessing. The NCO delivered a heavy punch to Williams’ face and he stumbled inside, crashing into the opposite wall.
The door slammed on him, the NCO looked through the peephole and marched off. Williams checked his face, but the blow had merely cut his lip. He sucked back the blood and, still handcuffed, groped his way around his new home, locating a WC, a tap and an iron bed with a straw mattress. He sat gingerly on the latter, and, despite the near certainty that there were lice just waiting for him, he sank back and closed his eyes, trying to still his racing mind so he could get some sleep. Astonishingly, he dozed.
He was woken by the sound of a trolley rattling across the steel latticework of the galleries. An elderly German was escorting two orderlies who were dishing out soup and coffee, although, as Williams discovered, it was difficult to be sure which was which. More visits gave him a grimy blanket and some newspaper, which was torn into small squares in case there was any doubt about its intended use. Finally, his handcuffs were removed and he massaged some life into his numb wrists.
Nothing too drastic yet, he thought. But he knew what might be awaiting him. Suspension from hooks in the ceiling with his arms behind his back, constant beatings, the famous and dreaded
baignoire
, where victims were repeatedly held under water until they lost consciousness, a torture that could be repeated for hours. A torture that was rumoured to be something of a spectator sport at rue de Saussaies—the German female clerks were often invited to watch.
The afternoon passed slowly, the anticipation of Gestapo and SD delights eating at him, so Williams tried to get his mind off torture and began to play mental games, trying to recall every winner of every grand prix since 1925, something to stop him thinking about Eve, to leave no room, no part of his brain that dared dwell on what he had got her into.
At around four there was a commotion. Voices shouting in French. Then English. ‘Is there an Englishman here?’
‘Yes,’ yelled another voice.
‘Quiet.’ Guards were trying to silence everyone, but the voices radiated off the hard metal surfaces so much it was hard to pinpoint who was speaking unless you were right next to the cell, and the conversations bloomed and died within seconds, everyone knowing they had two or three short sentences to make their point. Williams walked to the bars to listen, but not participate.
‘Who are you?’
‘Conrad. Vincent Conrad.’ Code name, thought Williams.
‘Chalambaud. You in the Racket?’
Williams knew what this meant, and so did Conrad. Wisely, he chose not to reply. Then the first voice said; ‘Don’t let the bastards break you, Vincent. The Allies have taken Sicily. It’s started.’
So Sicily really had fallen? Christ, from there Italy. So not Calais or Normandy. Jesus. The news both exhilarated and depressed him. Fighting their way up Italy, through Hitler’s heavily defended back door, meant they could forget the second front for at least a year.
An orderly appeared at the door, glaring. ‘Was that you?’ Williams shrugged, not wanting to give them an inch. ‘If it was, just shut up. Last time we celebrated some Allied victory Fritz shot five of us. Just shut up.’
The noise gradually subsided, to be replaced by the odd muffled scream from somewhere down a subterranean passage. Then singing, in both French and English. Except the lyrics to the songs were coded stories of missions, betrayal, escape, recapture. There were a lot of agents in the prison, thought Williams, a hell of a lot.
As he sat down on the bed again Williams thought about his wife. Damn. Eve, alone in a cell like this, waiting for … he squeezed his eyes shut. Go away, he told the images. Go away. He lay down and began to chew the inside of his cheek till it bled.
Across at the Women’s Section, Eve had been put in a higher, lighter cell with a scrawny, pinched woman who, the trustee delighted in telling her, was a prostitute, who looked at her with scant regard, and made it clear that over half the cell and all its contents were her property. Eve sat down quietly on her tiny cot and hoped Williams was OK. She couldn’t help feeling that men risked being treated much worse in this hateful place. Although she had already seen women being dragged off by their hair and kicked and beaten as they were pushed along the gangways, so perhaps this was leaping to a false conclusion. For the first time in a long time, Eve began to feel scared for herself rather than Will or Robert.
‘Resistance?’ asked the prostitute.
Eve shrugged, aware that the woman could easily be an informer. ‘A mistake. It’ll be cleared up.’
The woman grunted. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Eve.’
‘Renée. You won’t be here long.’
‘Why not?’
‘Resistance are usually taken to Saussaies or Foch. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Resistance.’ Eve’s expression must have shown her disbelief. ‘Why do you look like that? You think only the bourgeoisie are allowed in?’
‘No, I …’
‘I heard what the trustee said. Whore. He’s right. And I have a disease. And now so do twenty, thirty, forty German soldiers. And they’ll be sent out of France to die on the eastern front. Tell me, Eve, how many Germans did you get rid of?’
Eve burst out laughing and when she realised she wasn’t being mocked, Renée joined in. ‘I’ll make sure you get the Croix de Guerre.’
‘Just get me some of that penicillin, dear.’
Eve stood up and crossed over to the other woman’s bed. Renée hesitated and moved up. ‘Listen, I am new to all this, Renée. Forgive me, I have a feeling you …’ Eve stopped, struggling to find the expression.
‘Know the system? Like the back of my hand.’
‘My husband is also in here somewhere. I’m going to get him out.’
Renée rubbed finger and thumb together in the age-old symbol for money, but before she could elaborate, a key turned in the lock, the door swung out and in stepped Neumann, his gleaming, immaculate uniform and boots a stark contrast to the cancerous surroundings. Renée couldn’t help an intake of breath.
‘Eve.’ He glanced around at the cell, which was clean and neat by Fresnes standards. He placed a block of grey, gritty soap on her bed, along with a toothbrush, a hairbrush and a tube of toothpaste. ‘I brought you some things.’ He looked at Renée and his lip curled with distaste. ‘I will arrange for you to get your own cell.’
‘I’m happy here.’
‘I’m not happy you are here. I can get you out, you know. Very simple.’ Neumann raised a querying eyebrow.
‘And my husband?’
Neumann stood staring for a second, his face impassive, those blue eyes flashing, turned and left, slamming the cell door, bringing a fine shower of dust from the lintel.
Renée made the money gesture again, then pointed at her crotch. ‘I was forgetting. There are two ways out.’
T
HE SHREDDED REMNANTS
of the
Nacht und Nebel
order were still on the desk in Virginia’s cell. She had spent much of the last twenty-four hours in a coma-like state lying on the bed, refusing all food and offers of companionship. Now she wished she had an L pill; she would take it like a shot. She felt she had been bamboozled into a betrayal. But what had she done? What had she really done? Confirmed simply that Gatacre was Williams. Yet she had only discovered it by chance, she could have pretended the information had never come her way, but something, something weak inside had made her head nod of its own accord.