Grey Wolves (3 page)

‘Please,’ Delphine sobbed, as she writhed desperately. ‘I don’t want to die. I might even be able to help you.’

Henderson laughed. ‘Not one of the deadly ones, sweetie! It’ll just put you under for three or four hours. Bit of a nasty headache when you come around. If the Germans ask, tell them you passed out drunk and can’t remember a thing.’

Note

  
¹
 
Kriegsmarine – the official name of the German Navy during the Nazi era.

After drugging Delphine, Marc and Henderson braved the back lawn around the grand house, cutting between partying naval officers with darkness working in their favour. Henderson wore Gerhardt’s giant captain’s jacket and howled a Bavarian folk song, while Marc exchanged
Heil Hitlers
with an Oberlieutenant rolling around the shrubbery with a champagne bottle wedged down his trousers.

To avoid the checkpoint by the main road, the pair climbed a stile and crossed a couple of untended fields before hitting a dirt track, aiming roughly towards the small naval town of Lorient.

Marc and Henderson had operated in occupied France the previous year, and knew that German forces were spread thin, even in high-security zones near the coast. This was unavoidable: the Germans had conquered half a continent and there weren’t enough of them to go around.

But millions of French civilians had evacuated south when Hitler invaded the previous summer, and one way of reducing trouble in the northern coastal zones was to keep the population down by not letting refugees return.

The result was untended land and houses left to rot through the past winter. It was a nightmare for people who wanted to get home, but a godsend for Marc and Henderson who needed a bolthole where they could hide some of their equipment, and transform their appearance from sandy new arrivals to a respectable French father and son, down on their luck and hunting for work.

They skirted around two villages at a brisk pace before finding a suitably remote farmhouse. Its unoccupied state was obvious from the empty chicken coop and overgrown lawn. The back door didn’t need forcing because thieves had already ransacked the place.

What they’d taken reflected severe shortages France had suffered that winter. Glass candlesticks and figurines stood unmolested on a window ledge, metal pans hung over the kitchen range, but there wasn’t a tin of food, nor a coal in the fireplace. Anything you could chop and burn had been stripped out: curtains, doors, bedding. Only splinters and hinges remained from a kitchen dresser.

‘Cold and hungry thieves,’ Henderson said, as he turned the kitchen tap.

After a dead moth and some sediment came cleanish water. Marc had found the stub of a candle. He struck a match and placed the flickering light under the dining table so that it wouldn’t be obvious from outside.

‘How’s the foot?’ Henderson asked.

‘Ankle’s swollen up,’ Marc said. ‘Doesn’t hurt much though.’

‘Salt in seawater is a natural antiseptic,’ Henderson said. ‘Once you’ve had a wash I’ll put some iodine on the wound and bandage it. Then you can get a few hours’ rest.’

‘What are we gonna do without the transmitter?’ Marc asked, as he sat on a dining chair, unlacing his plimsoll.

‘We have our fall-back rendezvous aboard
Madeline
tomorrow night,’ Henderson said.

‘But we lost the canoe,’ Marc said, as he pulled off his plimsoll, getting a damp rubbery smell and a shot of pain up his leg. ‘And that idiot Rufus dropped us off at the wrong beach, so what are the chances they’ll be at the right area when it’s time to pick us up?’

‘We’ve got time to think it all through,’ Henderson said. ‘If we get stuck, we’ll have to go south and try getting over the mountains into Spain. There are always options. In this game the only certainty is that things won’t go to plan.’

*

Straw and a sleeping bag on the kitchen floor was paradise compared to the previous two nights aboard
Madeline
. The old tug offered a choice between a sodden rear deck, or the cramped triple bunk below deck next to the heat and racket from the steam boiler. Marc had tried both and slept in neither.

Nerves and pain made it hard to get to sleep, but once he’d won that battle, Marc was out until morning. The new day had a good feel to it, with a clear sky and warm air. He’d washed before bed, so he felt clean and cosy, and didn’t want to get up as he picked sleep out of his eyes.

Henderson’s sleeping bag was laid out on the opposite side of the dining table, but he was already up.

‘Still alive then?’ Henderson said, stepping in from the back yard where he’d been banging the sand out of his boots. ‘I’ve made every boy’s favourite breakfast.’

Marc’s bandaged ankle had bled overnight. Clotting blood had glued the bandage to the sleeping bag, but the pain was tolerable as he stood up. He scratched himself, and smiled when he saw a slab of high-energy chocolate and a small tin of condensed milk.

‘I’ve put most of our reserve equipment up in the loft,’ Henderson explained. ‘We’ll come back if we need it.’

‘What if the thieves come back?’ Marc asked.

‘There’s plenty of wood to strip out on this floor. It’ll be all right here for a day or so.’

Marc’s chocolate was rock hard and he warmed it in his hand before dipping it into the gloopy strands of thickened milk. Condensed milk was a rare luxury and he loved chocolate, but it made heavy going first thing in the morning.

‘Eat up, it might be all you get today,’ Henderson said. ‘We’ve got a couple of fake ration cards but even if they’re the right kind I doubt there’ll be much in the shops.’

‘I never get my appetite until I’ve been up for a bit,’ Marc said. ‘I checked Delphine’s documents while you were interrogating her, by the way. Her ID and tobacco card looked exactly like our fakes, but her bicycle permit and ration card were different colours and she had an extra document that looked like it was specific to this area.’

‘It’ll be tricky getting into town to photograph the U-boats,’ Henderson said, as he looked inside his boot before shaking out more sand. ‘But Madame Mercier lives on the outskirts. We can get to her if she’s home, and she might know a sneaky way into town.’

‘That’s if she’s still living at the same address,’ Marc said.

Henderson smiled. ‘It’s your bloody optimism that keeps me going, Marc. Now start getting dressed. Those plimsolls are horribly bloody and sure to raise questions. Can you walk barefoot?’

‘I’ve lived the high life since I arrived in England, but I’ve been a barefoot orphan most of my life.’

They set off after Marc had dressed and taken a shit, Henderson carrying a flour sack filled with a few clothes and possessions to make it look like he was nothing but a poor peasant looking for work. Marc took a small hunting-knife, which wasn’t unusual for a country boy, while Henderson had a small camera hidden in the lining of his hat and his pistol tucked into the back of his trousers.

The gun was a risk. It meant certain arrest if they were searched at a German checkpoint, but Henderson didn’t want to go unarmed until he was sure they had all the correct passes and documents.

Henderson knew where they’d landed the previous night, and roughly how far and in which direction they’d walked, but it still took a while to work out exactly where they’d wandered in the dark. They moved cautiously, not wanting to blunder on to a major road, or worse, a German checkpoint.

The sun was bright and they both had a sweat up by the time they reached their target in Queven, a prosperous settlement less than two kilometres from Lorient itself. Madame Mercier lived on a curving street lined with detached villas, the kind of place you’d expect a doctor or lawyer to live with his family.

Marc and Henderson felt out of place here in their peasant corduroys and rough shirts. They noted parked cars and telephone wires going into the villas, neither being a good sign because only Germans were allowed to have them.

An agent approaching a strange house must strike a balance. You can blunder into a trap if you don’t scout an area carefully, but walking around several times, peeking over hedges and looking through letterboxes, can arouse suspicions of nosy neighbours or passing cyclists.

Number eighteen sat behind high railings, with palms sprouting over the top. Alongside the villa a bare-chested man chopped firewood. At first they assumed he was a servant, but his boots had sheen, and his grey trousers were those of a shore-based Kriegsmarine rating.

Henderson gave Marc a little
keep walking
nudge, but the German had seen them peer through. He looked up and spoke bad French.

‘Good morning, may I help you?’

‘I’m looking for a Madame Mercier,’ Henderson said, trying to make it sound unimportant. ‘She used to live here, I believe.’

‘She upstairs. You want?’ the German said, as he stepped towards the gate to let them in while shouting, ‘Madame, there is a persons here to see you.’

‘Charles Hortefeux,’ Henderson said, as the front door opened.

The woman who emerged on to the front doorstep was large in all directions, and looked like she’d been up late the night before. She wore a turquoise negligee, with the previous day’s make-up blurred over her face and the short stubbly hair of a lady who was not usually seen without a wig.

‘I don’t know any Hortefeux,’ the woman blasted, as she eyed the man and barefoot boy with contempt. ‘And I don’t need gardeners, window washers, or whatever other scheme you have to part me from my money.’

Henderson was prepared for a difficult introduction to Madame Mercier, but having the young German gawping at them from only a couple of metres away made it far worse.

‘Well, Madame, if you’re sure,’ Henderson said, as he pulled a small photograph out of his pocket. It showed three men, with Big Ben in the background. ‘Can I just leave you with this business card, in case you change your mind?’

‘If it gets rid of you,’ Madame Mercier said, snatching the photo, but becoming flustered when she recognised the three men. They were Polish soldiers, whom she’d helped to escape from France a few months earlier.

‘Oh, Mr Horte
feux
,’ she said, after a pause. She pointed accusingly at the German. ‘Klaus, your accent is terrible! I thought you said Hautedeux. Well come in, how the devil have you been? Is this your son, all grown up now?’

The hallway had billowing rose curtains, china poodles, ship’s bells, stuffed flamingos, a collection of cocktail shakers and the head of an ocelot. Marc choked on talc, perfume and cat.

‘Is it private here?’ Henderson asked quietly. ‘Are any other Germans billeted in your house?’

Madame Mercier laughed, as she led them into a similarly over-the-top lounge with an evil-looking moggy skulking by the back window.

‘Klaus doesn’t live with me. I have an arrangement with a
very
senior officer. He’s fallen for one of my best girls, but can’t afford her prices. Instead he sends someone over, to mow the lawn and chop wood and suchlike, which is a good arrangement because it’s impossible to get a man in for anything these days.’

‘So the Germans didn’t shut your business down, Madame Mercier?’ Henderson asked, smiling coyly.

‘Do call me Brigitte,’ she said, peering through the windows to make sure that Klaus had gone back to chopping. ‘The uniforms may change, but men’s urges stay the same: cheap booze and easy women. Lorient has always been a navy town. The French and British shipped out and my clubs and bars were full of Germans within a fortnight. I’ve got places all along the main drag in town. Three upmarket ones reserved for the Krauts; the other three are for locals and the construction teams working on the U-boat bunkers.’

‘Quite a little empire,’ Henderson nodded. ‘Would you like to know about your three former employees? Soloman was kind enough to write a letter of introduction for me; though I’m afraid it got rather soggy.’

But Madame Mercier had turned her attention to Marc, pinching his right cheek and yanking his head up.

‘Is he your son, Mr Hortefeux?
Lovely
strong shoulders on him. I bet he’ll break some hearts when he’s older!’

Marc felt like he was being attacked by a powder puff as Henderson fought off laughter.

‘And his little bare feet. Poor puffin! We’ll have to find him some boots.’

‘That would be useful,’ Henderson said. ‘Thank you.’

‘So let’s hear about my three young friends,’ Madame Mercier said, as she gave Marc breathing space and unravelled a letter on tissue-thin paper. ‘They all made it safely across?’

‘They had a rough ride as I understand,’ Henderson said. ‘But they did well enough, especially considering that none of them are sailors. And of course, they never would have made it without your help.’

Madame Mercier looked down at herself modestly. ‘I didn’t do much, except put them in touch with some fishermen. Oh, and we hid them in a back room at one of my clubs while the Gestapo were out hunting. They’re lovely boys. It’s good to know they made it to Britain safely.’

‘Of course, my son and I didn’t travel from Britain to update you on your friends’ safe arrival,’ Henderson said. ‘When the Polish gentlemen were debriefed, they told us that you’re no fan of Germans and one of the best connected people in town. Lorient has the largest U-boat base in France. Those awful things are tearing British shipping apart in the Atlantic and we need to put a stop to it.’

‘And how do you intend to do that?’ Madame Mercier asked. ‘With one man and one boy?’

‘We’re on an information gathering mission,’ Henderson began. ‘We’ve got until tonight to find out all we can about this area. Everything from details of bus timetables and curfew regulations, to identity documents, the layout of the U-boat pens, German supply lines and security precautions.

‘When we get back to England, we’ll analyse the information. If it looks promising, we’ll come back for the long haul, for a full-scale sabotage operation. Frankly, Madame Mercier, you’re the only intelligence contact we have within fifty kilometres of here. I doubt we can pull this off without you, especially as we’ve lost our canoe.’