Jackdaws (26 page)

He watched her go in the fading
light. Her small, neat body suddenly seemed the most desirable thing in the
world.

When she had disappeared inside, he
followed. In the drawing room, Diana sat alone, smoking a cigarette, looking
thoughtful. On impulse, Paul sat close to her and said, "You've known
Flick since you were kids."

Diana smiled with surprising warmth.
"She's adorable, isn't she?"

Paul did not want to give away too
much of what was in his heart. "I like her a lot, and I wish I knew more
about her."

"She always yearned for
adventure," Diana said. "She loved those long trips we made to France
every February. We would spend a night in Paris, then take the Blue Train all
the way to Nice. One winter, my father decided to go to Morocco. I think it was
the best time of Flick's life. She learned a few words of Arabic and talked to
the merchants in the souks. We used to read the memoirs of those doughty
Victorian lady explorers who traveled the Middle East dressed as men."

"She got on well with your
father?"

"Better than I did."

"What's her husband like?"

"All Flick's men are slightly
exotic. At Oxford, her best friend was a Nepalese boy, Rajendra, which caused
great consternation in the senior common room at St. Hilda's, I can tell you,
although I'm not sure she ever, you know, misbehaved with him. A boy called
Charlie Standish was desperately in love with her, but he was just too boring
for her. She fell for Michel because he's charming and foreign and clever,
which is what she likes."

"Exotic," Paul repeated.

Diana laughed. "Don't worry,
you'll do. You're American, you've only got one and a half ears, and you're as
smart as a whip. You're in with a chance, at least."

Paul stood up. The conversation was
taking an uncomfortably intimate turn. "I'll take that as a
compliment," he said with a smile. "Goodnight."

On his way upstairs, he passed
Flick's room. There was a light under the door.

He put on his pajamas and got into
bed, but he lay awake. He was too excited and happy to sleep. He relived the
kiss again and again. He wished he and Flick could be like Ruby and Jim, and
give in to their desires shamelessly. Why not? he thought. Why the hell not?

The house fell quiet.

A few minutes after midnight, Paul
got up. He went along the corridor to Flick's room. He tapped gently on the
door and stepped inside.

"Hello," she said quietly.

"It's me."

"I know."

She lay on her back in the single
bed, her head propped up on two pillows. The curtains were drawn back, and
moonlight came in at the small window. He could see, quite clearly, the
straight line of her nose and the chisel chin that he had once thought not to
be pretty. Now they seemed angelic.

He knelt by the bed.

"The answer is no," she
said.

He took her hand and kissed her
palm. "Please," he said.

"I do."

He leaned over her to kiss her, but
she turned her head away.

"Just a kiss?" he said.

"If I kiss you, I'll be
lost."

That pleased him. It told him she
was feeling the same way he did. He kissed her hair, then her forehead and her
cheek, but she kept her face averted. He kissed her shoulder through the cotton
of her nightdress, then brushed his lips over her breast. "You want
to," he said.

"Out," she commanded.

"Don't say that."

She turned to him. He bent his face
to kiss her, but she put a finger on his lips as if to hush him.
"Go," she said. "I mean it."

He looked at her lovely face in the
moonlight. Her expression was set with determination. Although he hardly knew
her, he understood that her will could not be overridden. Reluctantly, he stood
up.

He gave it one more try. "Look,
let's—"

"No more talk. Go."

He turned away and left the room.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

DIETER SLEPT A few hours at the
Hotel Frankfort and got up at two a.m. He was alone: Stéphanie was at the house
in the rue du Bois with the British agent Helicopter. Some time this morning,
Helicopter would go in search of the head of the Bollinger circuit, and Dieter
had to follow him. He knew Helicopter would start at Michel Clairet's house, so
he had decided to put a surveillance team there by first light.

He drove to Sainte-Cécile in the
early hours, winding through the moonlit vineyards in his big car, and parked
in front of the château. He went first to the photo lab in the basement. There
was no one in the darkroom, but his prints were there, pegged on a line to dry
like laundry. He had asked for two copies of Helicopter's picture of Flick
Clairet. He took them off the line and studied one, remembering the way she
had run through gunfire to rescue her husband. He tried to see some of that
steely nerve in the carefree expression of the pretty girl in the swimsuit, but
there was no sign of it. No doubt it had come with war.

He pocketed the negative and picked
up the original photo, which would have to be returned surreptitiously to
Helicopter. He found an envelope and a sheet of plain paper, thought for a
moment, and wrote:

My darling,

While Helicopter is
shaving, please put this in his inside jacket pocket, so that it will look as
if it slipped out of his wallet. Thank you.

D.

He put the note and the picture in
the envelope, sealed it, and wrote: "Mlle. Lemas" on the front. He
would drop it off later.

He passed the cells and looked
through a judas at Marie, the girl who had surprised him yesterday by showing
up at the house in the rue du Bois with food for Mademoiselle Lemas's
"guests." She lay on a bloodstained sheet, staring at the wall with a
wide-eyed gaze of horror, emitting a constant low moan like a piece of machinery
that was broken but not switched off.

Dieter had interrogated Marie last
night. She had had no useful information. She had claimed she knew no one in
the Resistance, only Mademoiselle Lemas. Dieter had been inclined to believe
her, but he had let Sergeant Becker torture her just in case. However, she had
not changed her story, and he now felt confident that her disappearance would
not alert the Resistance to the impostor in the rue du Bois.

He suffered a moment of depression
as he stared at the wrecked body. He remembered her coming up the path
yesterday with her bicycle, a picture of vigorous health. She had been a happy
girl, albeit foolish. She had made a simple mistake, and now her life was
coming to a ghastly end. She deserved her fate, of course; she had helped
terrorists. All the same, it was horrible to contemplate.

He put her out of his mind and went
up the stairs. On the ground floor, the night shift telephonists were at their
switchboards. Above that, on what had once been a floor of impossibly grand
bedrooms, were the Gestapo offices.

Dieter had not seen Weber since the
fiasco in the cathedral and assumed the man was licking his wounds somewhere.
However, he had spoken to Weber's deputy and asked for four Gestapo men to be
here in plain clothes at three a.m. ready for a day's surveillance. Dieter had
also ordered Lieutenant Hesse to be here. Now he pulled aside a blackout blind
and looked out. Moonlight illuminated the parking lot, and he could see Hans
walking across the yard, but there was no sign of anyone else.

He went to Weber's office and was
surprised to find him there alone, behind his desk, pretending to work on some
papers by the light of a green-shaded lamp. "Where are the men I asked
for?" Dieter said.

Weber stood up. "You pulled a
gun on me yesterday," he said. "What the devil do you mean by
threatening an officer?"

Dieter had not expected this. Weber
was being aggressive about an incident in which he had made a fool of himself
Was it possible that he did not understand what a dreadful mistake he had made?
"It was your own damn fault, you idiot," Dieter said in exasperation.
"I didn't want that man arrested."

"You can be court-martialed for
what you did."

Dieter was about to ridicule the
idea; then he stopped himself. It was true, he realized. He had simply done
what was necessary to rescue the situation; but it was not impossible, in the
bureaucratic Third Reich, for an officer to be arraigned for using his
initiative. His heart sank, and he had to feign confidence. "Go ahead,
report me, I think I can justify myself in front of a tribunal."

"You actually fired your
gun!"

Dieter could not resist saying,
"I suppose that's something you haven't often witnessed, in your military
career."

Weber flushed. He had never seen
action. "Guns should be used against the enemy, not fellow officers."

"I fired into the air. I'm
sorry if I frightened you. You were in the process of ruining a first-class
counterintelligence coup. Don't you think a military court would take that into
account? What orders were you following? You were the one who showed lack of
discipline."

"I arrested a British terrorist
spy."

"And what's the point of that?
He's just one. They have plenty more. But, left to go free, he will lead us to
others—perhaps many others. Your insubordination would have destroyed that
chance. Fortunately for you, I saved you from a ghastly error."

Weber looked sly. "Certain
people in authority would find it highly suspicious that you're so keen to free
an Allied agent."

Dieter sighed. "Don't be
stupid. I'm not some wretched Jewish shopkeeper, to be frightened by the threat
of malicious gossip. You can't pretend I'm a traitor, no one will believe you.
Now, where are my men?"

"The spy must be arrested
immediately."

"No, he mustn't, and if you try
I'll shoot you. Where are the men?"

"I refuse to assign much-needed
men to such an irresponsible task."

"You
refuse?"

"Yes."

Dieter stared at him. He had not
thought Weber brave enough or foolish enough to do this. "What do you
imagine will happen to you when the Field Marshal hears about this?"

Weber looked scared but defiant.
"I am not in the army," he said. "This is the Gestapo."

Unfortunately, he was right, Dieter
thought despondently. It was all very well for Walter Goedel to order Dieter to
use Gestapo personnel instead of taking much-needed fighting troops from the
coast, but the Gestapo were not obliged to take orders from Dieter. The name of
Rommel had frightened Weber for a while, but the effect had worn off.

And now Dieter was left with no
staff, but Lieutenant Hesse. Could he and Hans manage the shadowing of
Helicopter without assistance? It would be difficult, but there was no
alternative.

He tried one more threat. "Are
you sure you're willing to bear the consequences of this refusal, Willi? You're
going to get into the most dreadful trouble."

"On the contrary, I think it is
you who are in trouble." Dieter shook his head in despair. There was no
more to be said. He had already spent too much time arguing with this idiot. He
went out.

He met Hans in the hall and
explained the situation. They went to the back of the château, where the
engineering section was housed in the former servants' quarters. Last night
Hans had arranged to borrow a PTT van and a moped, the kind of motorized
bicycle whose small engine was started by pedaling.

Dieter wondered whether Weber might
have found out about the vehicles and ordered the engineers not to lend them.
He hoped not: dawn was due in half an hour, and he did not have time for more
arguments. But there was no trouble. Dieter and Hans put on overalls and drove
away, with the moped in the back of the van.

They went to Reims and drove along
the rue du Bois. They parked around the corner and Hans walked back, in the
faint light of dawn, and put the envelope containing the photo of Flick into
the letter box. Helicopter's bedroom was at the back, so there was no serious
risk that he might see Hans, and recognize him later.

The sun was rising when they arrived
outside Michel Clairet's house in the center of town. Hans parked a hundred
meters down the road and opened a PTT manhole. He pretended to be working while
watching the house. It was a busy street with numerous parked vehicles, so the
van was not conspicuous.

Dieter stayed in the van, keeping
out of sight, brooding over the row with Weber. The man was stupid, but he had
a point. Dieter was taking a dangerous risk. Helicopter could give him the slip
and disappear. Then Dieter would have lost the thread. The safe and easy course
would be to torture Helicopter. But though letting him go was risky, it
promised rich rewards. If things went right, Helicopter could be solid gold.
When Dieter thought of the triumph that hung just beyond his grasp, he lusted
for it with a passion that made his pulse race.

On the other hand, if things went
wrong, Weber would make the most of it. He would tell everyone how he had
opposed Dieter's risky plan. But Dieter would not allow himself to worry about
such bureaucratic point-scoring. Men such as Weber, who played those games,
were the most contemptible people on earth.

The town came slowly to life. First
to appear were the women walking to the bakery opposite Michel's house. The
shop was closed, but they stood patiently outside, waiting and talking. Bread
was rationed, but Dieter guessed it sometimes ran out anyway, so dutiful
housewives shopped early to make sure they got their share. When eventually the
doors opened, they all tried to get in at once—unlike German housewives, who
would have formed an orderly queue, Dieter thought with a feeling of
superiority. When he saw them come out with their loaves, he wished he had
eaten some breakfast.