Jackdaws (40 page)

He did not move. He was a small man
with a worried air, but he was not to be bullied. "Perhaps I can give her
a message for you."

"I'm afraid not, it's too
personal."

"Then I will tell her that you
are here. The name?"

Flick glared in Diana's direction,
but Diana did not look up. "I am Madame Martigny," Flick said, giving
up. "Tell her I must speak to her immediately."

"Very well. If Madame would
care to wait here."

Flick ground her teeth with
frustration. As the head waiter walked away, she was tempted just to run past
him. Then she noticed a young man in the black uniform of an SS major at a
nearby table staring at her. She met his eye and looked away, fear rising in
her throat. Had he merely taken an idle interest in her altercation with the
head waiter? Was he trying to remember where he had seen her before, having
seen the poster but not yet made the connection? Or did he simply find her
attractive? In any event, Flick realized, it would be dangerous for her to make
a fuss.

Every second she stood here was
dangerous. She resisted the temptation to turn and run.

The head waiter spoke to Diana, then
turned and beckoned Flick.

Flick said to Ruby, "You'd
better wait here—one is less conspicuous than two." Then she walked
quickly across the room to Diana's table.

Neither Diana nor Maude had the
grace to look guilty, Flick observed angrily. Maude appeared pleased with
herself, Diana haughty. Flick put her hands on the edge of the table and leaned
forward to speak in a low voice. "This is terribly dangerous. Get up, now,
and leave with me. We'll pay the bill on the way out."

She had been as forceful as she knew
how, but they were living in a fantasy world. "Be reasonable, Flick,"
Diana said.

Flick was outraged. How could Diana
be such an arrogant idiot? "You stupid cow," she said. "Don't
you realize you'll get killed?"

She saw immediately that it had been
a mistake to use abuse. Diana looked superior. "It's my life. I'm entitled
to take that risk—"

"You're endangering us too, and
the whole mission. Now get up off that chair!"

"Look here—" There was a
commotion behind Flick. Diana stopped and looked past her.

Flick turned around and gasped.

Standing in the entrance was the
well-dressed German officer she had last seen in the square at Sainte-Cécile.
She took him in at a glance: a tall figure in an elegant dark suit with a white
handkerchief in the breast pocket.

She quickly turned her back, heart
pounding, and prayed that he had not noticed her. With her dark wig, there was
a good chance he would not have recognized her at first glance.

His name came back to her: Dieter
Franck. She had found his photograph in Percy Thwaite's files. He was a former
police detective. She recalled the note on the back of his photo: "A star
of Rommel's intelligence staff, this officer is said to be a skilled
interrogator and a ruthless torturer."

For the second time in a week, she
was close enough to shoot him.

Flick did not believe in
coincidence. There was a reason he was here at the same time as she.

She soon found out what it was. She
looked again and saw him striding across the restaurant toward her, with four
Gestapo types trailing him. The head waiter came after them, a look of panic on
his face.

Keeping her face averted, Flick
walked away.

Franck went straight to Diana's
table.

The whole place suddenly became
quiet: customers fell silent in midsentence, waiters stopped serving
vegetables, the sommelier froze with a decanter of claret in his hand.

Flick reached the doorway, where
Ruby stood waiting. Ruby whispered, "He's going to arrest them." Her
hand moved toward her gun.

Flick again caught the eye of the SS
major. "Leave it in your pocket," she murmured. "There's nothing
we can do. We might take on him and four Gestapo men, but we're surrounded by
German officers. Even if we killed all those five we'd be mowed down by the
others."

Franck was questioning Diana and
Maude. Flick could not make out the words. Diana's voice took on the tone of
supercilious indifference she used when she was in the wrong. Maude became
tearful.

Franck must have asked for their
papers, because the two women simultaneously reached for their handbags, on the
floor beside their chairs. Franck shifted his position so that he was to one
side of Diana and slightly behind her, looking over her shoulder, and suddenly
Flick knew what was going to happen next.

Maude took out her identity papers,
but Diana pulled a gun. A shot rang out, and one of the uniformed Gestapo men
doubled over and fell. The restaurant erupted. Women screamed, men dived for
cover. There was a second shot, and another Gestapo man cried out. Some diners
ran for the exit.

Diana's gun hand moved toward a
third Gestapo man. Flick had a flash of memory: Diana in the woods at
Somersholme, sitting on the ground smoking a cigarette with dead rabbits all
around her. She remembered what she had said to Diana: "You're a
killer." She had been right.

But Diana did not fire the third shot.

Dieter Franck kept a cool head. He
seized Diana's right forearm with both his hands and banged her wrist on the
edge of the table. She screamed with pain and the gun fell from her grasp. He
yanked her out of her chair, threw her facedown on the carpet, and fell on her
with both knees in the small of her back. He pulled her hands behind her back
and handcuffed her, ignoring the screams of pain she gave as he jerked her
injured wrist. He stood up.

Flick said to Ruby, "Let's get
out of here."

There was a crush at the doorway,
panicky men and women all trying to pass through at the same time. Before Flick
could move, the young SS major who had been staring at her earlier sprang to
his feet and grabbed her arm. "Wait a moment," he said in French.

Flick fought down panic. "Take
your hands off me!" He tightened his grip. "You seem to know those
women over there," he said.

"No, I don't!" She tried
to move away.

He pulled her back with a jerk.
"You'd better stay here and answer some questions."

There was another shot. Several
women screamed, but no one knew where the shot had come from. The SS officer's
face twisted in a grimace of agony. As he slumped to the floor, Flick saw Ruby,
behind him, slipping her pistol back into her raincoat pocket.

They both forced their way through
the crowd at the door, shoving ruthlessly, and burst out into the lobby. They
were able to run without drawing attention to themselves, because everyone else
was running.

Cars were parked in a line along the
curb in the rue Cambon, some of them attended by chauffeurs. Most of the
chauffeurs were hurrying toward the hotel to see what was happening. Flick
picked a black Mercedes 230 sedan with a spare wheel perched on the running
board. She looked into the front: the key was in the dash. "Get in!"
she yelled at Ruby. She got behind the wheel and pulled the self-starter. A big
engine rumbled into life. She engaged first gear, heaved the steering wheel
around, and accelerated away from the Ritz. The car was heavy and sluggish, but
stable: at speed, it cornered like a train.

When she was several blocks away she
reviewed her position. She had lost a third of her team, including her best
marksman. She considered whether to abandon the mission and immediately decided
to carry on. It would be awkward: she would have to explain why only four
cleaners had come to the château instead of the usual six, but she could make
up some excuse. It meant they might be questioned more closely, but she would
take that risk.

She dumped the car in the rue de la
Chapelle. She and Ruby were out of immediate danger. They walked quickly to the
flophouse. Ruby rounded up Greta and Jelly and brought them to Flick's room.
She told them what had happened.

"Diana and Maude will be questioned
immediately," she said. "Dieter Franck is a capable and ruthless
interrogator, so we have to assume they will tell everything they
know—including the address of this hotel. That means the Gestapo could be here
at any moment. We have to leave right away."

Jelly was crying. "Poor
Maude," she said. "She was a silly cow, but she didn't deserve to be
tortured."

Greta was more practical.
"Where will we go?"

"We'll hide in the convent next
door to the flophouse. They'll take anyone in. I've hidden escaped prisoners of
war there before now. They'll let us stay until daybreak."

"Then what?"

"We'll go to the station as
planned. Diana is going to tell Dieter Franck our real names, our code names,
and our false identities. He will put out an alert for anyone traveling under
our aliases. Fortunately, I have a spare set of papers for all of us, using the
same photographs but different identities. The Gestapo don't have photographs
of you three, and I've changed my appearance, so the checkpoint guards will
have no way of recognizing us. However, to be safe, we won't go to the station
at first light—we'll wait until about ten o'clock when it should be busy."

Ruby said, "Diana will also
tell them what our mission is."

"She'll tell them we're going
to blow up the railway tunnel at Marles. Fortunately, that's not our real
mission. It's a cover story I gave out."

Jelly said admiringly, "Flick,
you think of everything."

"Yes," she said grimly.
"That's why I'm still alive."

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

PAUL SAT IN the dismal canteen at
Grendon Underwood, brooding anxiously about Flick, for more than an hour. He
was beginning to believe that Brian Standish had been compromised. The incident
in the cathedral, the fact that Chatelle had been in total darkness, and the
unnatural correctness of the third radio message all pointed in the same
direction.

In the original plan, Flick would
have been met at Chatelle by a reception committee consisting of Michel and the
remnants of the Bollinger circuit. Michel would have taken them to a hideaway
for a few hours, then arranged transport to Sainte-Cécile. After they entered
the château and blew up the telephone exchange he would have driven them back
to Chatelle to meet their pickup plane. All that had changed now, but Flick
would still need both transport and a hiding place when she got to Reims, and
she would be relying on the Bollinger circuit to help. However, if Brian had
been compromised, would there be any of the circuit left? Was the safe house
safe? Was Michel in Gestapo hands, too?

At last, Lucy Briggs came into the
canteen and said, "Jean asked me to tell you that Helicopter's reply is
being decrypted now. Would you like to come with me?"

He followed her to the tiny
room—formerly a boot cupboard, he guessed—that served as Jean Bevins's office.
Jean had a sheet of paper in her hand. She looked annoyed. "I can't
understand this," she said.

Paul read it quickly.

CALLSIGN HLCP (HELICOPTER)

SECURITY TAG PRESENT

JUN 3 1944

MESSAGE READS:

TWO STENS WITH SIX
MAGAZINES

FOR EACH STOP ONE LEE
ENFELD RIFLE

WITH TEN CLIPS STOP SIX
COLT AUTOMATICS WITH APPROXIMATELY ONE HUNDRED ROUNDS STOP NO GRENADES OVER

Paul stared at the decrypt in
dismay, as if hoping the words might change to something less horrifying, but
of course they remained the same.

"I expected him to be
furious," Jean said. "He doesn't complain at all, just answers your
questions, as nice as pie."

"Exactly," said Paul.
"That's because it's not him." This message did not come from a
harassed agent in the field who had been presented with a sudden unreasonable
request by his bureaucratic superiors. The reply had been drafted by a Gestapo
officer desperate to maintain the smooth appearance of calm normality. The only
spelling mistake was "Enfeld" instead of "Enfield," and
even that suggested a German, for "feld" was German for
"field."

There was no longer any doubt. Flick
was in terrible danger.

Paul massaged his temples with his
right hand. There was now only one thing to do. The operation was falling
apart, and he had to save it—and Flick.

He looked up at Jean, and caught her
looking at him with an expression of compassion. "May I use your
phone?" he said.

"Of course."

He dialed Baker Street. Percy was at
his desk. "This is Paul. I'm convinced Brian has been captured. His radio
is being operated by the Gestapo." In the background, Jean Bevins gasped.

"Oh, hell," Percy said.
"And without the radio, we have no way to warn Flick."

"Yes, we do," said Paul.

"How?"

"Get me a plane. I'm going to
Reims—tonight."

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE AVENUE FOCH seemed to have been
built for the richest people in the world. A wide road running from the Arc de
Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne, it had ornamental gardens on both sides
flanked by inner roads giving access to the palatial houses. Number 84 was an
elegant residence with a broad staircase leading to five stories of charming
rooms. The Gestapo had turned it into a house of torture.

Dieter sat in a perfectly
proportioned drawing room, stared at the intricately decorated ceiling for a
moment, then closed his eyes, preparing himself for the interrogation. He had
to sharpen his wits and at the same time numb his feelings.

Some men enjoyed torturing
prisoners. Sergeant Becker in Reims was one. They smiled when their victims
screamed, they got erections as they inflicted wounds, and they experienced
orgasms during their victims' death throes. But they were not good interrogators,
for they focused on pain rather than information. The best torturers were men
such as Dieter who loathed the process from the bottom of their hearts.