Jackdaws (27 page)

After that, the working men appeared
in their boots and berets, each carrying a bag or cheap fiber case containing
his lunch. The children were just beginning to set out for school when
Helicopter appeared, pedaling the bicycle that had belonged to Marie. Dieter
sat upright. In the bicycle's basket was a rectangular object covered with a
rag: the suitcase radio, Dieter guessed.

Hans put his head up out of the
manhole and watched.

Helicopter went to Michel's door and
knocked. There was no reply, of course. He stood on the step for a while, then
looked in at the windows, then walked up and down the street looking for a back
entrance. There was none, Dieter knew.

Dieter had suggested to Helicopter
what to do next. "Go to the bar along the street, Chez Régis. Order coffee
and rolls, and wait." Dieter's hope was that the Resistance might be
watching Michel's house, alert for an emissary from London. He did not expect
full-time surveillance, but perhaps a sympathetic neighbor might have agreed to
keep an eye on the place. Helicopter's evident guilelessness would reassure
such a watcher. Anyone could tell, just by the way he walked around, that he
was not a Gestapo man or an agent of the Milice, the French security police.
Dieter felt sure that somehow the Resistance would be alerted, and before too
long someone would show up and speak to Helicopter—and that person might lead
Dieter to the heart of the Resistance.

A minute later Helicopter did as
Dieter had suggested. He wheeled his bicycle along the street to the bar and
sat at a pavement table, apparently enjoying the sunshine. He got a cup of
coffee. It had to be ersatz, made with roasted grain, but he drank it with
apparent relish.

After twenty minutes or so he got
another coffee and a newspaper from inside. He began to read the paper
thoroughly. He had a patient air, as if he was prepared to wait all day. That
was good.

The morning wore on. Dieter began to
wonder whether this was going to work. Maybe the Bollinger circuit had been so
decimated by the slaughter at Sainte-Cécile that it was no longer operational,
and there was no one left to perform even the most essential tasks. It would be
a profound disappointment if Helicopter did not lead him to other terrorists.
And it would please Weber no end.

The time approached when Helicopter
would have to order lunch to justify continuing to use the table. A waiter came
out and spoke to him, then brought him a pastis. That, too, would be ersatz,
made with a synthetic substitute for aniseed, but all the same Dieter licked his
lips: he would have liked a drink.

Another customer sat down at the
table next to Helicopter's. There were five tables, and it would have been
natural to take one farther away. Dieter's hopes rose. The newcomer was a
long-limbed man in his thirties. He wore a blue chambray shirt and navy canvas
trousers, but to Dieter's intuition he did not have the air of a workingman. He
was something else, perhaps an artist who affected a proletarian look. He sat
back in his chair and crossed his legs, resting his right ankle on his left
knee, and the pose struck Dieter as familiar. Had he seen this man before?

The waiter came out and the customer
ordered something. For a minute or so nothing happened. Was the man covertly
studying Helicopter? Or just waiting for his drink? The waiter brought a glass
of pale beer on a tray. The man took a long pull and wiped his mouth with a
satisfied air. Dieter began to think gloomily that he was just a man with a
thirst. But at the same time he felt he had seen that mouth-wiping gesture
before.

Then the newcomer spoke to
Helicopter.

Dieter tensed. Could this be what he
had been waiting for?

They exchanged a few casual words.
Even at this distance, Dieter sensed that the newcomer had an engaging
personality: Helicopter was smiling and talking with enthusiasm. After a few
moments, Helicopter pointed to Michel's house, and Dieter guessed he was asking
where the owner might be found. The other man gave a typical French shrug, and
Dieter could imagine him saying, "Me, I don't know." But Helicopter
seemed to persist.

The newcomer drained his beer glass,
and Dieter had a flash of recollection. He suddenly knew exactly who this man
was, and the realization so startled him that he jumped in his seat. He had
seen the man in the square at Sainte-Cécile, at another café table, sitting
with Flick Clairet, just before the skirmish—for this was her husband, Michel
himself.

"Yes!" Dieter said, and he
thumped the dashboard with his fist in satisfaction. His strategy had been proved
right—Helicopter had led him to the heart of the local Resistance.

But he had not been expecting this
degree of success. He had thought a messenger might come, and the messenger
might take Helicopter—and Dieter—to Michel. Now Dieter had a dilemma. Michel
was a very big prize. Should Dieter arrest him right away? Or follow him, in
the hope of catching even bigger fish?

Hans replaced the manhole cover and
got into the van. "Contact, sir?"

"Yes."

"What next?"

Dieter did not know what to do
next—arrest Michel, or follow him?

Michel stood up, and Helicopter did
the same.

Dieter decided to follow them.

"What shall I do?" Hans
said anxiously.

"Get out the bike, quick."

Hans opened the back doors of the
van and took out the moped.

The two men put money on the café
tables and moved away. Dieter saw that Michel walked with a limp, and recalled
that he had taken a bullet during the skirmish.

He said to Hans, "You follow
them, I'll follow you." He started the engine of the van.

Hans climbed on the moped and
started pedaling, which fired the engine. He drove slowly along the street,
keeping a hundred meters behind his quarry. Dieter followed Hans.

Michel and Helicopter turned a
corner. Following a minute later, Dieter saw that they had stopped to look in a
shop window. It was a pharmacy. They were not shopping for medicines, of
course: this was a precaution against surveillance. As Dieter drove by, they
turned and headed back the way they had come. They would be watching for a
vehicle that made a U-turn, so Dieter could not pursue them. However, he saw
Hans pull behind a truck and turn back, remaining on the far side of the street
but keeping the two men in sight.

Dieter went around the block and
caught up with them again. Michel and Helicopter were approaching the railway
station, with Hans still following.

Dieter asked himself whether they
knew they were being followed. The trick at the pharmacy might indicate that
they were suspicious. He did not think they had noticed the PTT van, for he
had been out of their sight most of the time, but they could have spotted the
moped. Most likely, Dieter thought, the reversal of direction was a precaution
taken routinely by Michel, who was presumably an
experienced undercover operator.

The two men crossed the gardens in
front of the station. There were no flowers in the beds, but a few trees were
blossoming in defiance of the war. The station was a solidly classical building
with pilasters and pediments, heavyweight and over decorated, no doubt like the
nineteenth-century businessmen who had built it.

What would Dieter do if Michel and
Helicopter caught a train? It was too risky for Dieter to get on the same
train. Helicopter would certainly recognize him, and it was even possible that
Michel might remember him from the square at Sainte-Cécile. No, Hans would have
to board the train, and Dieter would follow by road.

They entered the station through one
of three classical arches. Hans left his moped and followed them inside. Dieter
pulled up and did the same. If the two men went to the booking office, he would
tell Hans to stand behind them in the queue and buy a ticket to the same
destination.

They were not at the ticket window.
Dieter entered the station just in time to see Hans go down a flight of steps
to the tunnel beneath the lines that connected the platforms. Perhaps Michel
had bought tickets in advance, Dieter thought. That was not a problem. Hans
would just get on the train without a ticket.

On either side of the tunnel, steps
led up to the platforms. Dieter followed Hans past all the platform entrances.
Sensing danger, he quickened his pace as he mounted the stairs to the station's
rear entrance. He caught up with Hans and they emerged together into the rue de
Courcelles.

Several of the buildings had been
bombed recently, but cars were parked on those stretches of the road that were
clear of rubble. Dieter scanned the street, fear leaping in his chest. A
hundred meters away, Michel and Helicopter were jumping into a black car.
Dieter and Hans would never catch them. Dieter put his hand on his gun, but the
range was too great for a pistol. The car pulled away. It was a black Renault
Monaquatre, one of the commonest cars in France. Dieter could not read its
license plate. It tore off along the street and turned a corner.

Dieter cursed. It was a simple ploy
but infallible. By entering the tunnel, they had forced their pursuers to
abandon their vehicles; then they had a car waiting at the other side, enabling
them to escape. They might not even have detected their shadows: like the
change of direction outside the pharmacy, the tunnel trick had probably been a
routine precaution.

Dieter sank into gloom. He had
gambled and lost. Weber would be overjoyed.

"What do we do now?" said
Hans.

"Go back to
Sainte-Cécile."

They returned to the van, put the
moped in the back, and drove to headquarters.

Dieter had just one ray of hope. He
knew Helicopter's times for radio contact, and the frequencies assigned to him.
That information might yet be used to recapture him. The Gestapo had a
sophisticated system, developed and refined throughout the war, for detecting
illicit broadcasts and following them to their source. Many Allied agents had
been captured that way. As British training improved, so the wireless operators
had adopted better security precautions, always broadcasting from a different
location, never staying on air longer than fifteen minutes; but careless ones
could still be caught.

Would the British suspect that
Helicopter had been found out? Helicopter would by now be giving Michel a full
account of his adventures. Michel would question him closely about the arrest
in the cathedral and subsequent escape. He would be particularly interested in
the newcomer codenamed Charenton. However, he would have no reason to suspect
that Mademoiselle Lemas was not who she claimed to be. Michel had never met
her, so he would not be alerted even if Helicopter happened to mention that she
was an attractive young redhead rather than a middle-aged spinster. And
Helicopter had no idea that his one-time pad and his silk handkerchief had been
meticulously copied out by Stéphanie, or that his frequencies had been
noted—from the yellow wax crayon marks on the dials—by Dieter.

Perhaps, Dieter began to think, all
was not yet lost.

When they got back to the château,
Dieter ran into Weber in the hallway. Weber looked hard at him and said,
"Have you lost him?"

Jackals can smell blood, Dieter
thought. "Yes," he admitted. It was beneath his dignity to lie to
Weber.

"Ha!" Weber was
triumphant. "You should leave such work to the experts."

"Very well, then I shall,"
Dieter said. Weber looked surprised. Dieter went on, "He's due to broadcast
to England at eight o'clock tonight. Here's your chance to prove your
expertise. Show how good you are. Track him down."

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

THE FISHERMAN'S REST was a big pub
that stood on the estuary shore like a fort, with chimneys for gun turrets and smoked-glass
windows instead of observation slits. A fading sign in its front garden warned
customers to stay off the beach, which had been mined back in 1940 in
anticipation of a German invasion.

Since SOE had moved into the
neighborhood, the pub had been busy every night; its lights blazing behind the
blackout curtains, its piano loud, its bars crowded and spilling over into the
garden on warm summer evenings. The singing was raucous, the drinking was
heavy, and the canoodling was kept only just within the bounds of decency. An
atmosphere of abandon prevailed, for everyone knew that some of the youngsters
who were laughing uproariously at the bar tonight would embark tomorrow on
missions from which they might never return.

Flick and Paul took their team to
the pub at the end of their two-day training course. The girls dressed up for
the outing. Maude was prettier than ever in a pink summer frock. Ruby would
never be pretty, but she looked sultry in a black cocktail dress she had
borrowed from somewhere. Lady Denise had on an oyster-colored silk dress that
looked as if it had cost a fortune, though it did nothing for her bony figure.
Greta wore one of her stage outfits, a cocktail dress and red shoes. Even Diana
was wearing a smart skirt instead of her usual country corduroys and, to
Flick's astonishment, had put on a smear of lipstick.

The team had been given the code
name Jackdaws. They were going to parachute in near Reims, and Flick remembered
the legend of the Jackdaw of Reims, the bird that stole the bishop's ring.
"The monks couldn't figure out who had taken it, so the bishop cursed the
unknown thief." she explained to Paul as they both sipped scotch, hers
with water and his on the rocks. "Next thing they knew, the jackdaw appeared
all bedraggled, and they realized he was suffering from the effects of the
curse, and must be the culprit. I learned the whole thing at school:

The day was gone

The night came on

The monks and the friars they
searched till dawn When the sacristan saw