Jackdaws (33 page)

"Well!" said Denise.
"We've certainly found out what type of person we're dealing with."

Paul said, "You're dealing with
me." He turned to Fortescue. "I'm in command of
this operation, and I won't have Denise on the team at any price. If you want
to argue, call Monty."

"Well said, my boy," Percy
added.

Fortescue found his voice at last.
He wagged a finger at Flick. "The time will come, Mrs. Clairet, when you
will regret saying that to me." He got off his stool. "I'm sorry
about this, Lady Denise, but I think we've done all we can here."

They left.

"Stupid prat," Percy
muttered.

"Let's have dinner," said
Flick.

The others were already in the
dining room, waiting. As the Jackdaws began their last meal in England, Percy
gave each of them an expensive gift: silver cigarette cases for the smokers,
gold powder compacts for the others. "They have French hallmarks, so you
can take them with you," he said. The women were pleased, but he brought
their mood back down with his next remark. "They have a purpose, too. They
are items that can easily be pawned for emergency funds if you get into real
trouble."

The food was plentiful, a banquet by
wartime standards, and the Jackdaws tucked in with relish. Flick did not feel
very hungry, but she forced herself to eat a big steak, knowing it was more
meat than she would get in a week in France.

When they finished supper, it was
time to go to the airfield. They returned to their rooms to pick up their
French bags, then boarded the bus. It took them along another country lane and
across a railway line, then approached what looked like a cluster of farm
buildings at the edge of a large, flat field. A sign said Gibraltar Farm, but
Flick knew that this was RAF Tempsford, and the barns were heavily disguised
Nissen huts.

They went into what looked like a
cowshed and found a uniformed RAF officer standing guard over steel racks of
equipment. Before they were given their gear, each of them was searched. A box
of British matches was found in Maude's suitcase; Diana had in her pocket a
half-completed crossword torn from the
Daily Mirror
, which she swore she had
intended to leave on the plane; and Jelly, the inveterate gambler, had a pack
of playing cards with
"Made in Binningham"
printed on every one.

Paul distributed their identity
cards, ration cards, and clothing coupons. Each woman was given a hundred
thousand French francs, mostly in grubby thousand-franc notes. It was the
equivalent of five hundred pounds, enough to buy two Ford cars.

They also got weapons, .45-caliber
Colt automatic pistols and sharp double-bladed Commando knives. Flick declined
both. She took her personal gun, a Browning nine-millimeter automatic. Around
her waist she wore the leather belt, into which she could push the pistol or,
at a pinch, the submachine gun. She also took her lapel knife instead of the
Commando knife. The Commando knife was longer and deadlier, but more
cumbersome. The great advantage of the lapel knife was that when the agent was
asked to produce papers, she could innocently reach toward an inside pocket,
then at the last moment pull the knife.

In addition there was a Lee-Enfield
rifle for Diana and a Sten Mark II submachine gun with silencer for Flick.

The plastic explosive Jelly would
need was distributed evenly among the six women so that even if one or two bags
were lost there would still be enough to do the job.

Maude said, "It might blow me
up!"

Jelly explained that it was
extraordinarily safe. "I knew a bloke who thought it was chocolate and ate
some," she said. "Mind you," she added, "it didn't half
give him the runs."

They were offered the usual round
Mills grenades with the conventional turtle shell finish, but Flick insisted on
general-purpose grenades in square cans, because they could also be used as
explosive charges.

Each woman got a fountain pen with a
hollow cap containing a suicide pill.

There was a compulsory visit to the
bathroom before putting on the flying suit. It had a pistol pocket so that the
agent could defend herself immediately on landing, if necessary. With the suit,
they donned helmet and goggles and finally shrugged into the parachute harness.

Paul asked Flick to step outside for
a moment. He had held back the all-important special passes that would enable
the women to enter the château as cleaners. If a Jackdaw were to be captured by
the Gestapo, this pass would betray the true purpose of the mission. For
safety, he gave all the passes to Flick, to be distributed at the last minute.

Then he kissed her. She kissed him
back with desperate passion, clutching his body to hers, shamelessly thrusting
her tongue into his mouth until she had to gasp for breath.

"Don't get killed," he said
into her ear.

They were interrupted by a discreet
cough. Flick smelled Percy's pipe. She broke the clinch.

Percy said to Paul, "The pilot
is waiting for a word with you."

Paul nodded and moved away.

"Make sure he understands that
Flick is the officer in command," Percy called after him.

"Sure," Paul replied.

Percy looked grim, and Flick had a
bad feeling. "What's wrong?" she said.

He took a sheet of paper from his
jacket pocket and handed it to her. "A motorcycle courier from London
brought this from SOE headquarters just before we left the house. It came in
from Brian Standish last night." He sucked anxiously on his pipe and blew
out clouds of smoke.

Flick looked at the sheet of paper
in the evening sunlight. It was a decrypt. Its contents hit her like a punch in
the stomach. She looked up, dismayed. "Brian has been in the hands of the
Gestapo!"

"Only for a few seconds."

"So this claims."

"Any reason to think
otherwise?"

"Ah,
fuck
it," she said
loudly. A passing airman looked up sharply, surprised to hear a woman's voice
utter such words. Flick crumpled the paper and threw it on the ground.

Percy bent down, picked it up, and
smoothed out the creases. "Let's try to stay calm and think clearly."

Flick took a deep breath. "We
have a rule," she said insistently. "Any agent who is captured by the
enemy,
whatever the circumstances
, must immediately be returned to London for
debriefing."

"Then you'll have no wireless
operator."

"I can manage without one. And
what about this Charenton?"

"I suppose it's natural that
Mademoiselle Lemas might have recruited someone to help her."

"All recruits are supposed to
be vetted by London."

"You know that rule has never
been followed."

"At a minimum they should be
approved by the local commander."

"Well, he has been now—Michel
is satisfied that Charenton is trustworthy. And Charenton saved Brian from the
Gestapo. That whole scene in the cathedral can't have been deliberately staged,
can it?"

"Perhaps it never took place at
all, and this message comes straight from Gestapo headquarters."

"But it has all the right
security codes. Anyway, they wouldn't invent a story about his being captured
and then released. They'd know that would arouse our suspicions. They would
just say he had arrived safely."

"You're right, but still I
don't like it."

"No, nor do I," he said,
surprising her. "But I don't know what to do."

She sighed. "We have to take
the risk. There's no time for precautions. If we don't disable the telephone
exchange in the next three days it will be too late. We have to go
anyway."

Percy nodded. Flick saw that there
were tears in his eyes. He put his pipe in his mouth and took it out again.
"Good girl," he said, his voice reduced to a whisper. "Good
girl."

CHAPTER

THIRTY

SOE HAD NO planes of its own. It had
to borrow them from the RAF, which was like pulling teeth. In 1941, the air
force had reluctantly handed over two Lysanders, too slow and heavy for their
intended role in battlefield support but ideal for clandestine landings in
enemy territory. Later, under pressure from Churchill, two squadrons of
obsolete bombers were assigned to SOE, although the head of Bomber Command,
Arthur Hams, never stopped scheming to get them back. By the spring of 1944,
when dozens of agents were flown into France in preparation for the invasion,
SOE had the use of thirty-six aircraft.

The plane the Jackdaws boarded was
an American-made twin-engined Hudson light bomber, manufactured in 1939 and
since made obsolete by the four-engined Lancaster heavy bomber. A Hudson came
with two machine guns in the nose, and the RAF added a rear turret with two
more. At the back of the passenger cabin was a slide like a water chute, down
which the parachutists would glide into space. There were no seats inside, and
the six women and their dispatcher lay down on the metal floor. They were cold
and uncomfortable and scared, but Jelly got a fit of the giggles, which cheered
them all up.

They shared the cabin with a dozen
metal containers, each as tall as a man and equipped with a parachute harness,
all containing—Flick presumed—guns and ammunition to enable some other
Resistance circuit to run interference behind German lines during the invasion.

After dropping the Jackdaws at
Chatelle, the Hudson would fly on to another destination before turning around
and heading back to Tempsford.

Takeoff had been delayed by a faulty
altimeter, which had to be replaced, so it was one o'clock in the morning when
they left the English coastline behind. Over the Channel, the pilot dropped the
plane to a few hundred feet above the sea, trying to hide below the level of
enemy radar, and Flick silently hoped they would not be shot at by ships of the
Royal Navy, but he soon climbed again to eight thousand feet to cross the
fortified French coastline. He stayed high to traverse the "Atlantic
Wall," the heavily defended coastal strip, then descended again to three
hundred feet, to make navigation less difficult.

The navigator was constantly busy
with his maps, calculating the plane's position by dead reckoning and trying to
confirm it by landmarks. The moon was waxing, and only three days from full, so
large towns were easily visible, despite the blackout. However, they generally
had antiaircraft batteries, so had to be avoided, as did army camps and
military sites, for the same reason. Rivers and lakes were the most useful
terrain features, especially when the moon was reflected off the water. Forests
showed as dark patches, and the unexpected absence of one was a sure sign that
the flight had gone astray. The gleam of railway lines, the glow of a steam
engine's fire, and the headlights of the occasional blackout-breaking car were
all helpful.

All the way, Flick brooded over the
news about Brian Standish and the newcomer Charenton. The story was probably
true. The Gestapo had learned about the cathedral crypt rendezvous from one of
the prisoners they had taken last Sunday at the château, and they had set a
trap, which Brian had walked into, but he had escaped, with help from
Mademoiselle Lemas's new recruit. It was all perfectly possible. However, Flick
hated plausible explanations. She felt safe only when events followed standard
procedure and no explanations were required.

As they approached the Champagne
region, another navigation aid came into play. It was a recent invention known
as Eurekal Rebecca. A radio beacon broadcast a call sign from a secret location
somewhere in Reims. The crew of the Hudson did not know exactly where it was,
but Flick did, for Michel had placed it in the tower of the cathedral. This was
the Eureka half. On the plane was Rebecca, a radio receiver, shoehorned into
the cabin next to the navigator. They were about fifty miles north of Reims
when the navigator picked up the signal from the Eureka in the cathedral.

The intention of the inventors was
that the Eureka should be in the landing field with the reception committee,
but this was impracticable. The equipment weighed more than a hundred pounds,
it was too bulky to be transported discreetly, and it could not be explained
away to even the most gullible Gestapo officer at a checkpoint. Michel and
other Resistance leaders were willing to place a Eureka in a permanent
position, but refused to carry them around.

So the navigator had to revert to
traditional methods to find Chatelle. However, he was lucky in having Flick
beside him, someone who had landed there on several occasions and could recognize
the place from the air. In the event, they passed about a mile to the east of
the village, but Flick spotted the pond and redirected the pilot.

They circled around and flew over
the cow pasture at three hundred feet. Flick could see the flare path, four
weak, flickering lights in an L shape, with the light at the toe of the L
flashing the prearranged code. The pilot climbed toward six hundred feet, the
ideal altitude for a parachute drop: any higher, and the wind could blow the
parachutists away from the dropping zone; much lower, and the chute might not
have time to open fully before the agent hit the ground.

"Ready when you are," said
the pilot.

"I'm not ready," Flick
said.

"What's the matter?"

"Something's wrong."
Flick's instincts were sounding alarm bells. It was not just her worries about
Brian Standish and Charenton. There was something else. She pointed west, to
the village. "Look, no lights."

"That surprises you? There's a
blackout. And it's after three o'clock in the morning."

Flick shook her head. "This is
the countryside, they're careless about the blackout. And there's always
someone up: a mother with a new baby, an insomniac, a student cramming for
finals. I've never seen it completely dark."