Jackdaws (30 page)

"I just want you to calm down
and realize that the world is not going to come to an end simply because you
kissed Maude. You kissed me, once—remember?"

"I knew you'd bring that up.
But that was just kid stuff. With Maude, it wasn't just a kiss." Diana sat
down. Her proud face crumpled and she began to cry. "You know it was more
than that, you could see, oh, God, the things I did. What on earth did you
think?"

Flick chose her words carefully.
"I thought the two of you looked very sweet."

"Sweet?" Diana was
incredulous. "You weren't disgusted?"

"Certainly not. Maude is a
pretty girl, and you appear to have fallen in love with her."

"That's exactly what
happened."

"So stop being ashamed."

"How can I not be ashamed? I'm
queer!"

"I wouldn't look at it that way
if I were you. You ought to be discreet, to avoid offending narrow-minded
people such as Jelly, but there's no need for shame."

"Will I always be like
this?"

Flick considered. The answer was
probably yes, but she did not want to be brutal. "Look," she said,
"I think some people, like Maude, just love to be loved, and they can be
made happy by a man or a woman." In truth, Maude was shallow, selfish, and
tarty, but Flick suppressed that thought firmly. "Others are more inflexible,"
she went on. "You should keep an open mind."

"I suppose that's the end of
the mission for me and Maude."

"It most certainly is
not."

"You'll still take us?"

"I still need you. And I don't
see why this should make any difference."

Diana took out a handkerchief and
blew her nose. Flick got up and went to the window, giving her time to recover
her composure. After a minute, Diana spoke in a calmer voice. "You're
frightfully kind," she said with a touch of her old hauteur.

"Go to bed," Flick said.

Diana got up obediently.

"And if I were you.."

"What?"

"I'd go to bed with
Maude."

Diana looked shocked.

Flick shrugged. "It may be your
last chance," she said. "Thank you," Diana whispered. She
stepped toward Flick and spread her arms, as if to hug her; then she stopped.
"You may not want me to kiss you," she said.

"Don't be silly," Flick
said, and embraced her.

"Goodnight," said Diana.
She left the room.

Flick turned and looked out at the
garden. The moon was three-quarters full. In a few days' time it would be full,
and the Allies would invade France. A wind was disturbing the new leaves in the
forest: the weather was going to change. She hoped there would not be a storm
in the English Channel. The entire invasion plan could be ruined by the
capricious British climate. She guessed a lot of people were praying for good
weather.

She ought to get some sleep. She
left the room and climbed the stairs. She thought of what she had said to
Diana:
I'd go to bed with Maude. It may be your last chance.
She hesitated
outside Paul's door. It was different for Diana—she was single. Flick was
married.

But it might be her last chance.

She knocked at the door and stepped inside.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

SUNK IN GLOOM, Dieter returned to
the château at Sainte-Cécile in the Citroën with the radio detection team. He
went to the wireless listening room in the bomb proofed basement. Willi Weber
was there, looking angry. The one consolation from tonight's fiasco, Dieter
thought, was that Weber was not able to crow that he had succeeded where Dieter
had failed. But Dieter could have put up with all the triumphalism Weber could
muster in return for having Helicopter in the torture chamber.

"You have the message he
sent?" Dieter asked.

Weber handed him a carbon copy of
the typed message. "It has already been sent to the cryptanalysis office
in Berlin."

Dieter looked at the meaningless
strings of letters. "They won't be able to decode it. He's using a
one-time pad." He folded the sheet and slipped it into his pocket.

"What can you do with it?"
Weber said.

"I have a copy of his code
book," Dieter said. It was a petty victory, but he felt better.

Weber swallowed. "The message
may tell us where he is."

"Yes. He's scheduled to receive
a reply at eleven p.m." He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes
before eleven. "Let's record that, and I will decrypt the two
together."

Weber left. Dieter waited in the
windowless room. On the dot of eleven, a receiver tuned to Helicopter's
listening frequency began to chatter with the long-and-short beeps of Morse. An
operator wrote the letters down while at the same time a wire recorder ran.
When the chattering stopped, the operator pulled a typewriter toward him and
typed out what he had on his notepad. He gave Dieter a carbon copy.

The two messages could be everything
or nothing, Dieter thought as he got behind the wheel of his own car. The moon
was bright as he followed the twisting road through the vineyards to Reims and
parked in the rue du Bois. It was good weather for an invasion.

Stéphanie was waiting for him in the
kitchen of Mademoiselle Lemas's house. He put the coded messages on the table
and took out the copies Stéphanie had made of the pad and the silk
handkerchief. He rubbed his eyes and began to decode the first message, the one
Helicopter had sent, writing the decrypt on the scratch pad Mademoiselle Lemas
had used to make her shopping lists.

Stéphanie brewed a pot of coffee.
She looked over his shoulder for a while, asked a couple of questions, then
took the second message and began to decode it herself.

Dieter's decrypt gave a concise
account of the incident at the cathedral, naming Dieter as Charenton and saying
he had been recruited by Bourgeoise (Mademoiselle Lemas) because she was
worried about the security of the rendezvous. It said Monet (Michel) had taken
the unusual step of phoning Bourgeoise to confirm that Charenton was
trustworthy, and he was satisfied.

It listed the code names of those
members of the Bollinger circuit who had not fallen in the battle last Sunday
and were still active. There were only four.

It was useful, but it did not tell
him where to find the spies.

He drank a cup of coffee while he
waited for Stéphanie to finish. She handed him a sheet of paper covered with
her flamboyant handwriting.

When he read it, he could hardly
believe his luck. It said:

PREPARE RECEIVE GROUP OF
SIX NUMBER PARACHUTISTS CODENAMED JACKDAWS LEADER LEOPARDESS ARRIVING

ELEVEN PIP EMMA FRIDAY SECOND
JUNE

CHAMP DE PIERRE.

"My God," he whispered.

Champ de Pierre was a code name, but
Dieter knew what it meant, for Gaston had told him during the very first
interrogation. It was a drop zone in a pasture outside Chatelle, a small
village five miles from Reims. Dieter now knew exactly where Helicopter and
Michel would be tomorrow night, and could pick them up.

He could also capture six more
Allied agents as they parachuted to earth.

And one of them was
"Leopardess": Flick Clairet, the woman who knew more than anyone else
about the French Resistance, the woman who, under torture, would give him the
information he needed to break the back of the Resistance—just in time to stop
them aiding the invasion force.

"Jesus Christ Almighty," Dieter
said. "What a break."

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

PAUL AND FLICK were talking.

They lay side by side on his bed.
The lights were off, but the moon shone through the window. He was naked, as he
had been when she entered the room. He always slept naked. He wore pajamas only
to walk along the corridor to the bathroom.

He had been asleep when she came in,
but he had wakened fast and leaped out of bed, his unconscious mind assuming
that a clandestine visit in the night must mean the Gestapo. He had had his
hands around her throat before he realized who it was.

He was astonished, thrilled, and
grateful. He had closed the door, then kissed her, standing there, for a long
time. He was unprepared, and it felt like a dream. He was afraid he might wake
up.

She had caressed him, feeling his
shoulders and his back and his chest. Her hands were soft but her touch was
firm, exploring. "You have a lot of hair," she had whispered.

"Like an ape."

"But not as handsome," she
teased.

He looked at her lips, delighting in
the way they moved when she spoke, thinking that in a moment he would touch
them with his own, and it would be lovely. He smiled. "Let's lie
down."

They lay on the bed, facing one
another, but she did not take off any clothes, not even her shoes. He found it
strangely exciting to be naked with a woman who was fully dressed. He enjoyed
it so much that he was in no hurry to move to the next base. He wanted this
moment to last forever.

"Tell me something," she
said in a lazy, sensual voice.

"What?"

"Anything. I feel I don't know
you."

What was this? He had never had a
girl behave like this. She came to his room in the night, she lay on his bed
but kept her clothes on; then she questioned him. "Is that why you
came?" he said lightly, watching her face. "To interrogate me?"

She laughed softly. "Don't
worry, I want to make love to you, but not in a hurry. Tell me about your first
lover."

He stroked her cheek with light
fingertips, tracing the curve of her jaw. He did not know what she wanted,
where she was going. She had thrown him off balance. "Can we touch while
we talk?"

"Yes."

He kissed her lips. "And kiss,
too?"

"Yes."

"Then I think we should talk
for just a little while, maybe a year or two."

"What was her name?"

Flick was not as confident as she
pretended to be, he decided. In fact she was nervous, and that was the reason
for the questions. If it made her comfortable, he would answer. "Her name
was Linda. We were terribly young—I'm embarrassed at how young we were. The
first time I kissed her, she was twelve, and I was fourteen, can you
imagine?"

"Of course I can." She
giggled, and for an instant she was a girl again. "I used to kiss boys
when I was twelve."

"We always had to pretend we
were going out with a bunch of friends, and usually we started the evening that
way, but pretty soon we would peel off from the crowd and go to a movie or
something. We did that for a couple of years before we had real sex."

"Where was this, in
America?"

"Paris. My father was military
attaché at the embassy. Linda's parents owned a hotel that catered specially
for American visitors. We used to run
with a whole crowd of expatriate kids."

"Where did you make love?"

"In the hotel. We had it easy.
There were always empty rooms."

"What was it like the first
time? Did you use any, you know, precautions?"

"She stole one of her father's
rubbers."

Flick's fingertips traced a course
down his belly. He closed his eyes. She said, "Who put it on?"

"She did. It was very exciting.
I nearly came right then. And if you're not careful.."

She moved her hand to his hip.
"I'd like to have known you when you were sixteen."

He opened his eyes. He no longer
wanted to make this moment last forever. In fact, he found he was in a great
hurry to move on. "Would you…" His mouth was dry, and he swallowed.
"Would you like to take off some clothes?"

"Yes. But speaking of
precautions.."

"In my billfold. On the bedside
table."

"Good." She sat upright
and unlaced her shoes, throwing them on the floor. She stood up and unbuttoned
her blouse. She was tense, he could see, so he said, "Take your time we
have all night."

It was a couple of years since Paul had
watched a woman undress. He had been living on a diet of pinups, and they
always wore elaborate confections of silk and lace, corsets and garter belts
and transparent negligees. Flick was wearing a loose cotton chemise, not a
brassiere, and he guessed that the small, neat breasts he could see
tantalizingly outlined beneath it did not need support. She dropped her skirt.
Her panties were plain white cotton with frills around the legs. Her body was
tiny but muscular. She looked like a schoolgirl getting changed for hockey
practice, but he found that more exciting than a pinup.

She lay down again. "Is that
better?" she said.

He stroked her hip, feeling the warm
skin, then the soft cotton, then skin again. She was not yet ready, he could
tell. He forced himself to be patient and let her set the pace. "You
haven't told me about your first time," he said.

To his surprise, she blushed.
"It wasn't as nice as yours."

"In what way?"

"It was a horrible place, a
dusty storeroom."

He felt indignant. What kind of
idiot could take a girl as special as Flick and submit her to a furtive quickie
in a cupboard? "How old were you?"

"Twenty-two."

He had expected her to say
seventeen. "Jeepers. At that age you deserve a comfortable bed."

"That wasn't it, though."

She was relaxing again, Paul could
tell. He encouraged her to talk some more. "So what was wrong?"

"Probably that I didn't really
want to do it. I was talked into it."

"Didn't you love the guy?"

"Yes, I did. But I wasn't
ready."

"What was his name?"

"I don't want to tell
you."

Paul guessed it was her husband,
Michel, and decided not to question her any more. He kissed her and said,
"May I touch your breasts?"

"You can touch anything you
like."

No one had ever said that to him. He
found her openness startling and exciting. He began to explore her body. In his
experience, most women closed their eyes at this point, but she kept hers open,
studying his face with a mixture of desire and curiosity that inflamed him
more. It was as if by watching him she was exploring him, instead of the other
way around. His hands discovered the pert shape of her breasts, and his
fingertips got to know her shy nipples, learning what they liked. He took off
her panties. She had curly hair the color of honey, lots of it, and under the
hair, on the left side, a birthmark like a splash of tea. He bent his head and
kissed her there, his lips feeling the crisp brush of her hair, his tongue
tasting her moisture.