‘If you can call torturing two Frenchmen to the brink of
death passing, then the answer is yes.’
Von Pappen twitched. ‘Did you know either of them?’ he
asked, after a pause.
‘Yes.’ Then abruptly changing the subject, Francois said,
‘What have you discovered about Halunke?’
‘Not very much, I’m afraid,’ von Pappen confessed. ‘I’ve
been through the list you gave me, I’ve even come up with
some suggestions of my own as to who might have a grudge
against you, but as yet I have nothing conclusive.’
‘Did you check on Hortense de Bourchain’s family?’
‘Yes. They’re all still in Tahiti, with the exception of her
brother, Michel. He’s serving with the Seventh Army under
General Giraud, and hasn’t taken leave since arriving in
France.’
‘When did he arrive?’
‘Early in October. Two months after the attack on Elise.’
‘You’re certain of that?’
‘Absolutely.’
Francois didn’t bother to ask how von Pappen had got his
information; he trusted him implicitly, and had never yet
had reason to doubt him. ‘Is Elise up to giving a dinner
party?’ he asked.
‘I think so. I think she’ll be glad of something to do. She
rarely goes out these days.’
Francois’ mouth was set in a grim line. ‘How does she
look?’ he asked.
‘Better than you might think. Naturally, I haven’t seen her
body, though I imagine the scars are as yet barely healed.
But her face is good. Her left eye is partially closed, but you
have to look closely to notice. She walks with a slight limp.’
‘And her mind?’
‘She still has occasional lapses of memory, forgets what
she’s saying or who she’s talking to. The nightmares, as you
might expect, are still giving her trouble.’
Francois nodded. ‘Have you told her I’m coming?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll drop you at the avenue Foch now, and you can
tell her.’ He leaned across von Pappen and, opening the
glove compartment, pulled out a handwritten list of names.
‘I’d like you to arrange for as many as possible of the people
on this list to come to dinner tonight.’
‘Your brief?’ von Pappen enquired, his face twitching as
he looked down the list.
‘To persuade France not to go to war,’ Francois
answered prosaically. Then drawing up the corner of his
mouth in a smile, he glanced at von Pappen and said, ‘An
easy enough task, wouldn’t you say, Erich?’
Von Pappen chuckled. He knew precisely what Francois
meant. He would talk about capitulation tonight, of course,
but neither he nor the Germans expected him to succeed in
this mission - it was widely known in political circles that
France and Britain were on the verge of agreeing that
neither country should conclude peace separately. And if
Winston Churchill had anything to do with it, the British
would fight to the bitter end. No, the real reason why von
Liebermann had sent Francois to France now was to
discover how many of the country’s politicians and generals
were still prepared to listen to a man who - according to
rumour, at least - was a traitor.
‘There’s one other thing I’d like you to do, Erich,’
Francois said as they drove round the Arc de Triomphe and
filtered off into the avenue Foch. ‘I’d like you to travel to
Lorvoire tomorrow morning and speak to my father. Try not
to be seen, the chateau will be under heavy surveillance now
that I’m back in the country, which is why I can’t go myself.
Use the bridge at the back and speak first to Corinne. She’ll
arrange for my father to see you.’
‘You have a particular message for the Comte?’
‘I just want him to do as I instructed in my letter and
disinherit me. It’s the only way I know of preventing the
Germans from sending me back into France again. If I’ve
been denounced, publicly, as a traitor, then I’ll be worthless
as a spy against my own countrymen. It will cause my father
a great deal of pain to do this, so you must make certain he
knows all the facts. I want you to do this in person, so I can
be sure it’s handled properly.’
‘Understood.’
‘And before you go, Erich,’ Francois said, pulling in to
the side of the road outside Elise’s apartment. ‘D’you know
if anything’s been done about my other instruction in the
letter?’
Von Pappen pursed his lips. ‘You mean, concerning your
wife? I’ve heard nothing.’ Then, when it was clear Francois
was going to say no more, ‘You’re going to the Bois de
Boulogne now?’
‘Yes.’
‘The staff are expecting you. I shall telephone you there later.’ And slamming the car door, he walked off across the pavement, his hairless head exposed unflinchingly to the
wind.
When Francois arrived at the Lorvoire house in the Bois
de Boulogne he found that fires had been lit in the
drawing-room and study, and when he went upstairs to his
bedroom, there was Gilbert, his valet, pumping the bellows
at the hearth. Francois almost laughed then, as he thought
how old Gilbert might have reacted if he had walked into the
house wearing his German staff-officer’s uniform. He
greeted him fondly, for he had known the old man since he
was a child; then he went back downstairs to the study,
where he ate the late lunch which had been prepared for
him, and looked at the morning’s newspapers.
Afterwards, he went to sit in a chair beside the fire,
intending to consider how best to approach the task in hand
for the evening. But instead, he found that his tired mind
was continuously and disturbingly arrested by a sense of
impending doom that had been with him from the moment
he set foot back in France. The mind very often played
tricks when starved of sleep, he knew that, but the sense of
foreboding was so strong that he found himself sitting
forward in the chair and holding his head in his hands. He
wished to God now that he’d killed those two Frenchmen
before he left Germany. Never leave your man alive to tell
tales, one of the first rules of the game. But von Liebermann
had particularly required that they be left alive - and by now
would almost certainly have tortured them himself and
discovered exactly who they were. And once he knew that,
he would understand why Francois had had no compunction
about dealing with his fellow-countrymen in the brutal,
merciless manner he had. In other words, torturing two
French agents whom he knew for a fact to be working for the
Soviets, was going to do nothing to prove his fealty to the
Third Reich.
So now the question was, what would von Liebermann do
to make his displeasure known? To teach him what a
madman he was even to consider deceiving the Abwehr…
Which led Francois to the most pressing question of all:
where, and who the hell, was Halunke?
‘I don’t like it, Lucien,’ Claudine sighed. ‘Armand said he
thought he saw someone this morning. I know it could have
been anyone, but who in their right mind is going to go into
the forest with this fog still hanging around? And what does
this man want? What is he doing here when he must know
that Francois is in Germany?’
‘Assuming you’re right, and there is someone out there,’
Lucien answered, lighting two cigarettes and handing one
to her, ‘then I guess Francois is the only one who can answer
those questions.’
Claudine turned to scan his handsome face. ‘What’s he
done, Lucien?’ she said. ‘Do you know? He told me he thought this man had some kind of grudge against him…’
Lucien shook his head. ‘There’s a whole side to my
brother that’s as much of a mystery to me as it is to you,
Claudine,’ he said. ‘I imagine there are any number of
people who think they have cause to hate him.’
‘But so deeply that they must terrorize his family like
this?’ She shivered. ‘Do you really think this man intends to
harm us?’
Lucien smiled, and getting up from the sofa, strolled
across to the fire. ‘Who can tell what’s going on in his mind?’
he said. He turned back to look at her and took another draw
on his cigarette. ‘Perhaps you should go away for a few days, cherie. You haven’t seemed at all yourself lately. Why not go up to Paris? A change of scene might do you good. Take
Monique with you.’
‘I couldn’t leave Louis. Not when that … that man is
outside.’
‘Then take Louis too. Though he’s quite well taken care
of here, you know. Francois has seen to that, remember?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, Yes, he has, hasn’t he?’ She looked
down at her cigarette as she flicked the ash into an ashtray
beside her. Lucien’s suggestion was tempting, though
perhaps not for the reasons he thought. Oh, she would
certainly like to escape from the loathsome prying eyes that
she felt were following her everywhere - but what she really
wanted was to get away from Armand for a while. For his
sake more than her own. Since they had broken off their
affair, he had withdrawn so deeply into himself that any
attempt she made to be friendly was met with just a stony
glare. And if he did reply, it was in a voice so thick with pain
or sarcasm that she could hardly bear it. And as well as
Armand, there was Francois; her fears for his safety, her
anger at what he had done, her feelings for him - so many
thoughts whirling frenziedly around in her mind that the
prospect of getting away from the chateau, of being
somewhere else for a few days, was extremely inviting.
‘Monique is going to Paris anyway,’ Lucien said. ‘And I
do believe she has arranged to meet your aunt to go and
rattle tins at the Ritz with her, for refugee relief and soldiers’
canteens.’
That settled it. Why on earth it hadn’t occurred to her
before to go and talk things over with Tante Celine, she
couldn’t imagine.
‘Then yes. Yes, I’ll go too,’ she said decisively, getting up
to ring the bell for Magaly. ‘Why don’t you come too?’ she
said.
‘I can’t. My leave is over at the end of the week, and I
don’t think Maman would appreciate it if I spent my last few
days anywhere but with her. Anyway, ma chere, what you
need is time for yourself-so go to it! And by the way, the
uniform for tin-rattling is a simple black dress, or so they tell
me.’
‘I’ll tell Magaly,’ she laughed.
He walked across the room, but at the door he turned
back. ‘Claudine,’ he said, a serious note to his voice that
belied the twinkle in his eyes, ‘you’ll work it out in the end,
you know.’
She lowered her eyes, not wanting him to see the sudden
and terrible desperation that had rushed from nowhere to
swamp her. ‘But it’s not that easy, is it?’ she whispered,
‘when I don’t even know if I’ll ever see him again?’
‘Oh, you will. And if I know my brother, much sooner
than you think.’ He grinned. ‘And don’t be too surprised,
either, if one of these days you discover that he loves you
every bit as much as you do him.’
Her hand reached out to grab the back of a chair. ‘No!’
she cried. ‘No, Lucien don’t say that! Please!’ But it was
already too late. That tiny, withering seed of hope that she
had tried, since the day she married him, to destroy, had
absorbed the words so greedily that it was already starting to
thrive again.
It was just past five thirty in the evening when the telephone
rang. Francois, heaving himself from the chair where he had
fallen into an uneasy slumber, got up to answer it himself.
‘Good news,’ von Pappen’s voice came down the line.
‘There will be eight guests for dinner this evening,
including Paul Reynaud, Captain Paillole and William
Bullitt, the American Ambassador. Every one of them has
cancelled other engagements; they’re obviously keen to
hear what you have to say.’
Francois wasn’t sure how he felt about that, and made no
comment.
‘I have also taken the liberty of inviting someone not on
your list,’ von Pappen continued. ‘I’m sure you would have
invited him if you’d known he was going to be in Paris.’ He
paused. ‘It’s Colonel de Gaulle.’
Francois’ eyebrows flickered. ‘What is he doing in Paris?’
‘He’s here only for the day. There was talk that he was to
be made Under-Secretary for Defence, but Prime Minister
Daladier has vetoed it. As you can imagine, Monsieur de
Gaulle is not in the best of humours.’
Francois grinned, already looking forward to seeing his
old friend. ‘How is Elise?’ he asked, his smile fading.
Von Pappen lowered his voice, and faintly Francois could
hear the sound of Elise singing in the bathroom. ‘Excited,’
Erich answered. ‘And nervous.’
‘You’re sure she’s up to this?’
‘Positive. She’s looking better than I’ve seen her for a
long time. Would you like to have a word?’
‘No. But tell her I’m looking forward to seeing her.’
Throughout the evening, Francois could feel Elise’s eyes on
him down the polished length of the dining table. Once in a