Jackdaws (7 page)

If there was a cloud hiding the moon
it was impossible, and the plane would not even take off.

However, this was a fine night, and
Flick was hopeful. Sure enough, a couple of minutes before midnight, she heard
the unmistakable sound of a single-engined plane, faint at first, then rapidly
growing louder, like a burst of applause, and she felt a home going thrill. She
began to flash her light in the Morse letter "X." If she flashed the
wrong letter, the pilot would suspect a trap and go away without landing.

The plane circled once, then came
down steeply. It touched down on Flick's right, braked, turned between Michel
and Claude, taxied back to Flick, and turned into the wind again, completing a
long oval and finishing up ready for takeoff.

The aircraft was a Westland
Lysander, a small, high-winged monoplane, painted matte black. It was flown by
a crew of one. It had two seats for passengers, but Flick had known a
"Lizzie" to carry four, one on the floor and one on the parcel shelf.

The pilot did not stop the engine.
His aim was to remain on the ground no more than a few seconds.

Flick wanted to hug Michel and wish
him well, but she also wanted to slap his face and tell him to keep his hands
off other women. Perhaps it was just as well that she had no time for either.

With a brief wave, Flick scrambled
up the metal ladder, threw open the hatch, and climbed aboard.

The pilot glanced behind, and Flick
gave him the thumbs-up. The little plane jerked forward and picked up speed,
then rose into the air and climbed steeply.

Flick could see one or two lights in
the village: country people were careless about the blackout. When Flick had
flown in, perilously late at four in the morning, she had been able to see from
the air the red glare of the baker's oven, and driving through the village she
had smelled the new bread, the essence of France.

The plane banked to turn, and Flick
saw the moonlit faces of Michel, Gilberte, and Claude as three white smears on
the black background of the pasture. As the plane leveled and headed for
England, she realized with a sudden surge of grief that she might never see
them again.

CHAPTER

SIX

DIETER FRANCK DROVE through the
night in the big Hispano-Suiza, accompanied by his young assistant, Lieutenant
Hans Hesse. The car was ten years old, but its massive eleven-liter engine was
tireless. Yesterday evening, Dieter had found a neat row of bullet holes
stitched in the generous curve of its offside fender, a souvenir of the
skirmish in the square at Sainte-Cécile, but there was no mechanical damage,
and he felt the holes added to the car's glamour, like a dueling scar on the
cheek of a Prussian officer.

Lieutenant Hesse masked the
headlights to drive through the blacked-out streets of Paris, then removed the
covers when they got on the road to Normandy. They took turns at the wheel, two
hours each, though Hesse, who adored the car and hero-worshiped its owner,
would gladly have driven the whole way.

Half asleep in the passenger seat,
mesmerized by the country roads unwinding in the headlights, Dieter tried to
picture his future. Would the Allies reconquer France, driving the occupying
forces out? The thought of Germany defeated was dismal. Perhaps there would be
some kind of peace settlement, with Germany surrendering France and Poland but
keeping Austria and Czechoslovakia. That seemed not much better. He found it
hard to imagine everyday life back in Cologne, with his wife and family, after
the excitement and sensual indulgence of Paris and Stéphanie. The only happy
ending, for Dieter and for Germany, would be for Rommel's army to push the
invaders back into the sea.

Before dawn on a damp morning Hesse
drove into the small medieval village of La Roche-Guyon, on the Seine river
between Paris and Rouen. He stopped at the roadblock at the edge of the
village, but they were expected, and were quickly waved on. They went past
silent, shuttered houses to another checkpoint at the gates of the ancient
castle. At last they parked in the great cobbled courtyard. Dieter left Hesse
with the car and went into the building.

The German commander in chief [West]
was Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt, a reliable senior general from the old
officer class. Under him, charged with the defense of the French coast, was Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel. The castle of La Roche-Guyon was Rommel's headquarters.

Dieter Franck felt an affinity with
Rommel. Both were the sons of teachers—Rommel's father had been a
headmaster—and consequently both had felt the icy breath of German military
snobbery from such men as von Runstedt. But otherwise they were very different.
Dieter was a sybarite, enjoying all the cultural and sensual pleasures France
had to offer. Rommel was an obsessive worker who did not smoke or drink and
often forgot to eat. He had married the only girlfriend he had ever had, and he
wrote to her three times a day.

In the hall, Dieter met Rommel's
aide-de-camp, Major Walter Goedel, a cold personality with a formidable brain.
Dieter respected him but could never like him. They had spoken on the phone
late last night. Dieter had outlined the problem he was having with the Gestapo
and said he wanted to see Rommel as soon as possible. "Be here at four
a.m.," Goedel had said. Rommel was always at his desk by four o'clock in
the morning.

Now Dieter wondered if he had done
the right thing. Rommel might say, "How dare you bother me with trivial
details?" Dieter thought not. Commanders liked to feel they were on top of
the details. Rommel would almost certainly give Dieter the support he was
asking for. But you could never be sure, especially when the commander was
under strain.

Goedel nodded a curt greeting and
said, "He wants to see you right now. Come this way."

As they walked along the hallway,
Dieter said, "What do you hear from Italy?"

"Nothing but bad news,"
Goedel said. "We're withdrawing from Arce."

Dieter gave a resigned nod. The
Germans were fighting fiercely, but they had been depressingly unable to halt
the northward advance of the enemy.

A moment later Dieter entered
Rommels office. It was a grand room on the ground floor. Dieter noticed with
envy a priceless seventeenth-century Gobelin tapestry on one wall. There was
little furniture but for a few chairs and a huge antique desk that looked, to
Dieter, as if it might be the same age as the tapestry. On the desk stood a
single lamp. Behind the desk sat a small man with receding sandy hair.

Goedel said, "Major Franck is
here, Field Marshal."

Dieter waited nervously. Rommel
continued reading for a few seconds, then made a mark on the sheet of paper. He
might have been a bank manager reviewing the accounts of his more important
customers—until he looked up. Dieter had seen the face before, but it never
failed to make him feel threatened. It was a boxer's face, with a flat nose and
a broad chin and close-set eyes, and it was suffused with the naked aggression
that had made Rommel a legendary commander. Dieter recalled the story of
Rommel's first military engagement, during the First World War. Leading an
advance guard of three men, Rommel had come upon a group of twenty French
troops. Instead of retreating and calling for reinforcements, Rommel had opened
fire and dashed at the enemy. He had been lucky to survive—but Dieter recalled
Napoleon's dictum: "Send me lucky generals." Since then, Rommel had
always favored the sudden bold assault over the cautious planned advance. In
that he was the polar opposite of his desert opponent, Montgomery, whose
philosophy was never to attack until you were certain of victory.

"Sit down, Franck," said
Rommel briskly. "What's on your mind?"

Dieter had rehearsed this. "On
your instructions, I've been visiting key installations that might be
vulnerable to attack by the Resistance and upgrading their security."

"I've also been trying to
assess the potential of the Resistance to inflict serious damage. Can they
really hamper our response to an invasion?"

"And your conclusion?"

"The situation is worse than we
imagined."

Rommel grunted with distaste, as if
an unpleasant suspicion had been confirmed. "Reasons?"

Rommel was not going to bite his
head off. Dieter relaxed a little. He recounted yesterday's attack at
Sainte-Cécile: the imaginative planning, the plentiful weaponry, and most of
all the bravery of the fighters. The only detail he left out was the beauty of
the blonde girl.

Rommel stood up and walked across to
the tapestry. He stared at it, but Dieter was sure he did not see it. "I
was afraid of this," Rommel said. He spoke quietly, almost to himself
"I can beat off an invasion, even with the few troops I have, if only I
can remain mobile and flexible—but if my communications fail, I'm lost."

Goedel nodded agreement.

Dieter said, "I believe we can
turn the attack on the telephone exchange into an opportunity."

Rommel turned to him with a wry
smile. "By God, I wish all my officers were like you. Go on, how will you
do this?"

Dieter began to feel the meeting was
going his way. "If I can interrogate the captured prisoners, they may lead
me to other groups. With luck, we might inflict a lot of damage on the
Resistance before the invasion."

Rommel looked skeptical. "That
sounds like bragging." Dieter's heart sank. Then Rommel went on. "If
anyone else said it, I might send him packing. But I remember your work in the
desert. You got men to tell you things they hardly realized they knew."

Dieter was pleased. Seizing his
advantage, he said, "Unfortunately, the Gestapo is refusing me access to
the prisoners."

"They are such imbeciles."

"I need you to intervene."

"Of course." Rommel looked
at Goedel. "Call avenue Foch." The Gestapo's French headquarters was
at 84 avenue Foch in Paris. "Tell them that Major Franck will interrogate
the prisoners today, or their next phone call will come from
Berchtesgaden." He was referring to Hitler's Bavarian fortress. Rommel
never hesitated to use the Field Marshal's privilege of direct access to
Hitler.

"Very good," said Goedel.

Rommel walked around his
seventeenth-century desk and sat down again. "Keep me informed, please,
Franck," he said, and returned his attention to his papers.

Dieter and Goedel left the room.

Goedel walked Dieter to the main
door of the castle.

Outside, it was still dark.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

FLICK LANDED AT RAF Tempsford, an
airstrip fifty miles north of London, near the village of Sandy in
Bedfordshire. She would have known, just from the cool, damp taste of the night
air in her mouth, that she was back in England. She loved France, but this was
home.

Walking across the airfield, she
remembered coming back from holidays as a child. Her mother would always say
the same thing as the house came into view: "It's nice to go away, but
it's nice to come home." The things her mother said came back to her at
the oddest moments.

A young woman in the uniform of a
FANY corporal was waiting with a powerful Jaguar to drive her to London.
"This is luxurious," Flick said as she settled into the leather seat.

"I'm to take you directly to
Orchard Court," the driver said. "They're waiting to debrief
you."

Flick rubbed her eyes.
"Christ," she said feelingly. "Do they think we don't need
sleep?"

The driver did not respond to that.
Instead she said, "I hope the mission went well, Major."

"It was a snafu."

"I beg pardon?"

"Snafu," Flick repeated.
"It's an acronym. It stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up."

The woman fell silent. Flick guessed
she was embarrassed. It was nice, she thought ruefully, that there were still
girls to whom the language of the barracks was shocking.

Dawn broke as the fast car sped
through the Hertfordshire villages of Stevenage and Knebworth. Flick looked out
at the modest houses with vegetables growing in the front gardens, the country
post offices where grumpy postmistresses resentfully doled out penny stamps,
and the assorted pubs with their warm beer and battered pianos, and she felt
profoundly grateful that the Nazis had not got this far.

The feeling made her all the more
determined to return to France. She wanted another chance to attack the
château. She pictured the people she had left behind at Sainte-Cécile: Albert,
young Bertrand, beautiful Geneviève, and the others dead or captured. She
thought of their families, distraught with worry or stunned by grief. She
resolved that their sacrifice should not have been fruitless.

She would have to start right away.
It was a good thing she was to be debriefed immediately: she would have a
chance to propose her new plan today. The men who ran SOE would be wary at
first, for no one had ever sent an all-female team on such a mission. There
were all sorts of snags. But there were always snags.

By the time they reached the north
London suburbs it was full daylight, and the special people of the early
morning were out and about: postmen and milkmen making their deliveries, train
drivers and bus conductors walking to work. The signs of war were everywhere: a
poster warning against waste, a notice in a butcher's window saying No Meat
Today, a woman driving a rubbish cart, a whole row of small houses bombed into
rubble. But no one here would stop Flick, and demand to see her papers, and put
her in a cell, and torture her for information, then send her in a cattle truck
to a camp where she would starve. She felt the high-voltage tension of living
undercover drain slowly out of her, and she slumped in the car seat and closed
her eyes.

She woke up when the car turned into
Baker Street. It went past No. 64: agents were kept out of the headquarters
building so that they could not reveal its Secrets under interrogation. Indeed,
many agents did not know its address. The car turned into Portman Square and
stopped outside Orchard Court, an apartment building. The driver sprang out to
hold the door open.