Jackdaws (47 page)

He gave the driver the address of
the Moulier place. He found Hans lurking in a warehouse doorway fifty meters
along the street. No one had come or gone all night, Hans said, so Michel must
still be inside. Dieter told his driver to wait around the next corner, then
stood with Hans, sharing the croissants and watching the sun come up over the
roofs of the city.

They had a long wait. Dieter fought
to control his impatience as the minutes and hours ticked away uselessly. The
loss of Stéphanie weighed on his heart, but he had recovered from the immediate
shock, and he had regained his interest in the war. He thought of the Allied
forces massing somewhere in the south or east of England, shiploads of men and
tanks eager to turn the quiet seaside towns of northern France into
battlefields. He thought of the French saboteurs—armed to the teeth thanks to
parachute drops of guns, ammunition, and explosives—ready to attack the German
defenders from behind, to stab them in the back and fatally cramp Rommel's
ability to maneuver. He felt foolish and impotent, standing in a doorway in
Reims, waiting for an amateur terrorist to finish his breakfast. Today,
perhaps, he would be led into the very heart of the Resistance—but all he had
was hope.

It was after nine o'clock when the
front door opened.

"At last," Dieter
breathed. He moved back from the sidewalk, making himself inconspicuous. Hans
put out his cigarette.

Michel came out of the building
accompanied by a boy of about seventeen, who, Dieter guessed, might be a son of
Moulier. The lad keyed a padlock and opened the gates of the yard. In the yard
was a clean black van with white lettering on the side that read
Moulier & Fils-Viandes
. Michel got in.

Dieter was electrified. Michel was
borrowing a meat delivery van. It had to be for the Jackdaws. "Let's
go!" he said.

Hans hurried to his motorcycle, which
was parked at the curb, and stood with his back to the road, pretending to
fiddle with the engine. Dieter ran to the corner, signaled the Gestapo driver
to start the car, then watched Michel.

Michel drove out of the yard and
headed away.

Hans started his motorcycle and
followed. Dieter jumped into the car and ordered the driver to follow Hans.

They headed east. Dieter, in the
front passenger seat of the Gestapo's black Citroën, looked ahead anxiously.
Moulier's van was easy to follow, having a high roof with a vent on top like a
chimney. That little vent will lead me to Flick, Dieter thought optimistically.

The van slowed in the chemin de La
Carrire and pulled into the yard of a champagne house called Laperrière. Hans
drove past and turned the next corner, and Dieter's driver followed. They
pulled up and Dieter leaped out.

"I think the Jackdaws hid out
there overnight," Dieter said.

"Shall we raid the place?"
Hans said eagerly.

Dieter pondered. This was the
dilemma he had faced yesterday, outside the café. Flick might be in there. But
if he moved too quickly, he might prematurely end Michel's usefulness as a
stalking horse.

"Not yet," he said. Michel
was the only hope he had left. It was too soon to risk losing that weapon.
"We'll wait."

Dieter and Hans walked to the end of
the street and watched the Laperrière place from the corner. There were a tall,
elegant house, a courtyard full of empty barrels, and a low industrial building
with a flat roof Dieter guessed the cellars ran beneath the flat-roofed
building. Moulier's van was parked in the yard.

Dieter's pulse was racing. Any
moment now, Michel would reappear with Flick and the other Jackdaws, he
guessed. They would get into the van, ready to drive to their target—and Dieter
and the Gestapo would move in and arrest them.

As they watched, Michel came out of
the low building. He wore a frown and he stood indecisively in the yard,
looking around him in a perplexed fashion. Hans said, "What's the matter
with him?"

Dieter's heart sank. "Something
he didn't expect." Surely Flick had not evaded him again?

After a minute, Michel climbed the
short flight of steps to the door of the house and knocked. A maid in a little
white cap let him in.

He came out again a few minutes
later. He still looked puzzled, but he was no longer indecisive. He walked to
the van, got in, and turned it around.

Dieter cursed. It seemed the
Jackdaws were not here. Michel appeared just as surprised as Dieter was, but
that was small consolation.

Dieter had to find out what had
happened here. He said to Hans, "We'll do the same as last night, only
this time you follow Michel and I'll raid the place."

Hans started his motorcycle.

Dieter watched Michel drive away in
Moulier's van, followed at a discreet distance by Hans Hesse on his motorcycle.
When they were out of sight, he summoned the three Gestapo men with a wave and
walked quickly to the Laperrière house.

He pointed at two of the men.
"Check the house. Make sure no one leaves." Nodding at the third man,
he said, "You and I will search the winery." He led the way into the
low building.

On the ground floor there was a
large grape press and three enormous vats. The press was pristine: the harvest
was three or four months away. There was no one present but an old man sweeping
the floor. Dieter found the stairs and ran down. In the cool underground
chamber there was more activity: racked bottles were being turned by a handful
of blue-coated workers. They stopped and stared at the intruders.

Dieter and the Gestapo man searched
room after room of bottles of champagne, thousands of them, some stacked
against the walls, others racked slantwise with the necks down in special
A-shaped frames. But there were no women anywhere.

In an alcove at the far end of the
last tunnel, Dieter found crumbs of bread, cigarette ends, and a hair clip. His
worst fears were dismally confirmed. The Jackdaws had spent the night here. But
they had escaped.

He cast about for a focus for his
anger. The workers would probably know nothing about the Jackdaws, but the
owner must have given permission for them to hide here. He would suffer for it.
Dieter returned to the ground floor, crossed the yard, and went to the house. A
Gestapo man opened the door. "They're all in the front room," he
said.

Dieter entered a large, gracious
room with elegant but shabby furnishings: heavy curtains that had not been
cleaned for years, a worn carpet, a long dining table and a matching set of
twelve chairs. The terrified household staff were standing at the near end of
the room: the maid who opened the door, an elderly man who looked like a butler
in his threadbare black suit, and a plump woman wearing an apron who must have
been the cook. A Gestapo man held a pistol pointed at them. At the far end of
the table sat a thin woman of about fifty, with red hair threaded with silver,
dressed in a summer frock of pale yellow silk. She had an air of calm
superiority.

Dieter turned to the Gestapo man and
said in a low voice, "Where's the husband?"

"He left the house at eight.
They don't know where he went. He's expected home for lunch."

Dieter gave the woman a hard look.
"Madame Laperrière?"

She nodded gravely but did not deign
to speak. Dieter decided to puncture her dignity. Some German officers behaved
with deference to upper-class French people, but Dieter thought they were
fools. He would not pander to her by walking the length of the room to speak to
her. "Bring her to me," he said.

One of the men spoke to her. Slowly,
she got up from her chair and approached Dieter. "What do you want?"
she said.

"A group of terrorists from
England escaped from me yesterday after killing two German officers and a
French woman civilian."

"I'm sorry to hear that,"
said Madame Laperrière.

"They tied the woman up and
shot her in the back of the head at point-blank range," he went on.
"Her brains spilled out onto her dress."

She closed her eyes and turned her
head aside. Dieter went on, "Last night your husband sheltered those
terrorists in your cellar. Can you think of any reason why he should not be
hanged?"

Behind him, the maid began to cry.

Madame Laperrière was shaken. Her
face turned pale and she sat down suddenly. "No, please," she
whispered.

Dieter said, "You can help your
husband by telling me what you know."

"I don't know anything,"
she said in a low voice. "They came after dinner, and they left before
dawn. I never saw them."

"How did they leave? Did your
husband provide them with a car?"

She shook her head. "We have no
gas."

"Then how do you deliver the
champagne you make?"

"Our customers have to come to
us."

Dieter did not believe her. He felt
sure Flick needed transportation. That was why Michel had borrowed a van from
Philippe Moulier and brought it here. Yet, when Michel got here, Flick and the
Jackdaws had gone. They must have found alternative means of transport and
decided to go on ahead. No doubt Flick had left a message explaining the
situation and telling Michel to catch up with her.

Dieter said, "Are you asking me
to believe they left here on foot?"

"No," she replied.
"I'm telling you that I don't know. When I woke up, they had gone."

Dieter still thought she was lying,
but to get the truth out of her would take time and patience, and he was
running out of both. "Arrest them all," he said, and his angry
frustration injected a petulant note into his voice.

The phone rang in the hall. Dieter
stepped out of the dining room and picked it up.

A voice with a German accent said,
"Let me speak to Major Franck."

"This is he."

"Lieutenant Hesse here,
Major."

"Hans, what happened?"

"I'm at the station. Michel
parked the van and bought a ticket to Marles. The train is about to leave."

It was as Dieter had thought. The
Jackdaws had gone ahead and left instructions for Michel to join them. They
were still planning to blow up the railway tunnel. He felt frustrated that
Flick was continuing to stay one step ahead of him. However, she had not been
able to escape him completely. He was still on her tail. He would catch her
soon. "Get on the train, quickly," he said to Hans. "Stay with
him. I'll meet you at Marles."

"Very good," said Hans,
and he hung up.

Dieter returned to the dining room.
"Call the château and have them send transportation," he said to the
Gestapo men. "Turn all the prisoners over to Sergeant Becker for
interrogation. Tell him to start with Madame." He pointed to the driver.
"You can drive me to Marles."

CHAPTER

FORTY-SEVEN

IN THE CAFÉ de La Gare, near the
railway station, Flick and Paul had a breakfast of ersatz coffee, black bread,
and sausage with little or no meat in it. Ruby, Jelly, and Greta sat at a
separate table, not acknowledging them. Flick kept an eye on the street
outside.

She knew that Michel was in terrible
danger. She had contemplated going to warn him. She could have gone to the
Moulier place—but that would have played into the hands of the Gestapo, who
must be following Michel in the hope that he would lead them to her. Even to
phone the Moulier place would have risked betraying her hideout to a Gestapo
eavesdropper at the telephone exchange. In fact, she had decided, the best
thing she could do to help Michel was not to contact him directly. If her
theory was right, Dieter Franck would let Michel remain at large until Flick
was caught.

So she had left a message for Michel
with Madame Laperrière. It read:

Michel—

I am sure you are under
surveillance. The place we were at last night was raided after you left. You
have probably been followed this morning. We will leave before you get here and
make ourselves inconspicuous in the town center. Park the van near the railway
station and leave the key under the driver's seat. Get a train to Marles. Shake
off your shadow and come back.

Be careful—please!

—Flick

Now burn this.

It seemed good in theory, but she
waited all morning in a fever of tension to see whether it would work.

Then, at eleven o'clock, she saw a
high van draw up and park near the station entrance. Flick held her breath. On
the side, in white lettering, she read
Moulier & Fils-Viandes
.

Michel got out, and she breathed
again.

He walked into the station. He was
carrying out her plan.

She looked to see who might be
following him, but it was impossible. People arrived at the station constantly,
on foot, on bicycles, and in cars, and any of them might have been shadowing
Michel.

She remained in the café,
pretending to drink the bitter, unsatisfying coffee substitute, keeping an eye
on the van, trying to discover whether it was under surveillance. She studied
the people and vehicles coming and going outside the station, but she did not
spot anyone who might have been watching the van. After fifteen minutes, she
nodded to Paul. They got up, picked up their cases, and walked out.

Flick opened the van door and got
into the driver's seat. Paul got in the other side. Flick's heart was in her
mouth. If this was a Gestapo trap, now would be the moment when they arrested
her. She fumbled beneath her seat and found a key. She started the van.

She looked around. No one seemed to
have noticed her. Ruby, Jelly, and Greta came out of the café. Flick jerked
her head to indicate that they should get in the back.

She looked over her shoulder. The
van was fitted out with shelves and cupboards, and trays for ice to keep the
temperature down. Everything looked as if it had been well scrubbed, but there
remained a faint, unpleasant odor of raw meat.